Corpse Suzette Read online

  “You women are nuts.”

  As Dirk maneuvered the Buick around the dark road with its sharp curves, Savannah couldn’t help thinking that the way home seemed a lot longer than the way to Devon’s house.

  Deep, heavy, depression of the soul could cause that.

  “We’ve got nothing,” she said. “Not a blamed thing.”

  “So? I’ve barely started on the case,” he replied. “It’s too soon.”

  “You’ve barely started. I’ve been working on it for thirty-six hours, and I’ve got squat, zip, nada. You know as well as I do that if you don’t solve a homicide in the first forty-eight hours, your chances are cut in half.”

  “That’s just because most murders are obvious. You arrive at the house, you see the body on the floor and the body’s brother standing over it with a bloody steak knife. You ask the other relatives what happened, and they tell you the two of them were drunk and fighting over who got the biggest steak. Case solved. The other kind take longer.”

  “Which kind?”

  “The kind where it ain’t so obvious.”

  Savannah sighed. “That’s probably wise and profound, but I’m way too tired to appreciate your sapience right now. I just want to go home and go to bed.”

  “Did you just call me a sap?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Then I’ll offer to take you home and even tuck you into bed myself. Maybe I’ll throw in a little backrub, a little all-over, hot oil, body massage. What do you say?”

  “Eh, bite me.”

  “Okay. Never mind.”

  Chapter

  10

  Years ago, Savannah had promised herself that, someday, she would treat herself to one homicide. Just one.

  She intended to murder Officer Kenny Bates. And she was sure that if there was even one woman on the jury, she’d get away with it.

  Kenny served the fine citizens of San Carmelita by guarding the front desk in the medical examiner’s complex. You had to get by him to see Dr. Liu or any of her assistants.

  Getting past him wasn’t difficult. He was a worthless guard. But signing in without being highly offended and grossly insulted was impossible. Kenny was living proof that not all pigs had snouts. Some of them just had body odor, bad breath, and manners to match.

  “Savannah! Hey, babe!” His ugly face split with a smile the moment she walked through the doors. “Long time no see!”

  “Long time no bathe,” she replied as she approached his desk and tried to breathe through her ears. Experience had taught her that breathing was a bad idea within an eight-foot radius of Kenny Bates.

  Dirk walked through the door behind her and growled under his breath. “Back off, Bates and slide that clipboard over here.” Bates pushed the board with its attached pen toward Savannah and leaned over the counter as far as he could, straining to see down the front of her blouse.

  She caught a whiff of something that smelled like egg salad and nacho cheese chips as he said, “I was wondering when you were going to come see me. I’ve been meaning to tell you... after you solved that last big case, I saw your picture in the paper. I cut it out and taped it to my ceiling, right over my bed, next to Miss December.”

  “Hey!” Dirk barked. “Watch your mouth or you’ll be eating your teeth, jackass!”

  Savannah held up one hand. “That’s okay, Dirk. Bates and I have an understanding. He stays on that side of the counter, and I don’t give him a karate kick in the groin.”

  She grabbed the sign-in board and scribbled a name on it— P.H. Cue. Then she pushed it back at him and said in a low, menacing voice, “Get that picture off your ceiling, Bates. I mean it. If you don’t, I’ll find out. I’ll wait for you in a dark alley. And I’ll blow your brains out. You won’t even see me coming. You’ll just be hanging around one minute and the next, you’re in pervert hell. Got it?”

  He snickered, but looked uncomfortable.

  She leaned closer. “Look into my eyes, Bates, and see if I don’t mean it.”

  Kenny squirmed under the blue lasers like a worm on a hot sidewalk. “All right. I’ll take it down.”

  “And tear it into little pieces and throw it away. I’m a private investigator. I’m going to check in twenty-four hours. I’ll know whether you did or not.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  As she and Dirk left the counter and walked down the hallway, she could see Dirk grinning from the corner of her eye.

  “OF Kenny actually believed you,” he said. “Like you would know what was on his bedroom ceiling.”

  “Like I would go within ten miles of his bedroom... wearing a biohazard suit.”

  As they passed the double doors to the medical examiner’s autopsy suite, Dirk pushed one open and looked inside. “Nope,” he said. “Nothing going on in there. She must be done with your buddy Sergio.”

  “Not my buddy. Never my buddy. Sergio was only a few degrees away from Kenny Bates. Better dressed, same lousy attitude toward women.”

  Dirk turned and gave her an inquisitive look. “I never asked. What do you think of me when it comes to that stuff? My attitude toward broads, that is.”

  She laughed and punched him in the ribs. “For a guy who calls females ‘broads’ you’re remarkably progressive. Go figure. Did you call Dr. Liu earlier to see if she was finished before we bopped over here bright and early in the morning?”

  “Naw, I never call her anymore. She gets mad. Says I’m nudging her; that I need to take patience management classes.”

  “Patience management? Wouldn’t you have to actually get some patience before you learn how to manage it? Come on, let’s look in her office.”

  Sure enough, Dr. Liu’s door was open, and she was sitting at her desk. When she first laid eyes on Dirk, she gave an exasperated sigh. But when she saw that he had Savannah in tow, she jumped up and hurried to embrace her.

  “Hey, sister,” she exclaimed. “You still hanging out with this old dinosaur?”

  “Somebody’s gotta hold his leash.” Savannah returned the hearty hug and marveled that she could have probably wrapped her arms twice around the slender M.E. Tall, willowy, and breathtakingly beautiful, Dr. Jennifer Liu looked more like a lingerie model than a woman who dissected human bodies on a daily basis. Her long black hair was pulled back with a bright red scarf and even a baggy lab coat couldn’t totally conceal her womanly curves.

  But Savannah liked her anyway. They both loved Godiva chocolate, and that was a powerful bond.

  “You should have called first,” Dr. Liu told Dirk as he settled onto a chair next to her desk. “I don’t have anything to tell you yet.”

  “Didn’t you do the autopsy this morning?” He looked bitterly disappointed. “I figured you’d get right on it, what with me telling you I need it ASAP and all.”

  Dr. Liu seated Savannah in another chair and returned to her own behind the desk. “You detectives always want everything ASAP,” she said, “but you are the worst. You must think the world revolves around you. The rest of us live and breathe merely to make your life more convenient.”

  “And pleasant,” he added. “Don’t forget pleasant. When are you gonna do my guy?”

  She reached for a manila folder on top of a stack on her desk and tossed it toward him. “I did your guy. First thing this morning.”

  He grinned and reached for the folder. “Thanks. You’re the best, doc. No matter what anybody says.”

  “I did it right away in spite of the fact that you told me to do it ASAP. I actually had a hole in my schedule. Don’t expect that sort of service ever again.”

  Dirk turned to Savannah. “The good doc here is madly in love with me. Can you tell?”

  Savannah nodded. “Oh, it’s written all over her face. I think she’s about to ‘love’ you over the head with that paperweight there.”

  He opened the folder. “I can’t read this gobbledygook. It’s all Greek to me.”

  “Actually, it’s more likely to be Latin,” Dr. Liu said. “But the botto
m line translation is: I don’t know what killed him.”

  Dirk glowered. “Well, that’s just hunky-dory. What am I supposed to do with that?”

  Dr. Liu frowned back. “Not yet.”

  “Not yet what?”

  “I don’t know what killed him yet. But I haven’t gotten the labs back. When I do, maybe they’ll tell me.”

  Savannah reached over and took the folder from Dirk. She scanned the page, hoping it might make more sense to her than it did to Dirk.

  It didn’t.

  “So,” she said, “tell us what he didn’t die of.”

  “He didn’t die of heart disease,” Dr. Liu said. “Or a stroke. No evidence of any sort of illness, other than a bit of liver cirrhosis, apparently from drinking too much.”

  “Poisoning?” Savannah asked.

  “Maybe, but I saw no signs that he had ingested anything toxic. The stomach lining was normal, not inflamed, and the stomach contents to be expected for a man who had eaten lunch but no dinner yet. My CSI techs said there were no signs of vomiting at the scene. No food or drink either.”

  “Could he have breathed in something?” Savannah said, thinking of Kenny Bates’s toxic breath.

  “The nasal passages, bronchial tubes, and lungs were unremarkable. I doubt it. The only thing I noticed was a reasonably fresh injection site on his outer right thigh, about here....” She pointed to a spot on her own leg, several inches above the knee. “And there were a couple of old, healed needle marks there, as well.”

  “The guy was a junkie?” Dirk asked.

  “I doubt it, although we’ll know better when the lab results are in. I saw none of the other signs of drug addiction, and his veins were healthy. All he had were the intramuscular injection sites. Not like a chronic, intravenous drug abuser.”

  “Maybe somebody held him down and forced something on him,” Savannah suggested.

  “No bruising of any kind,” Dr. Liu said. “If he’d been forced, surely there would have been some contusions or defensive wounds.”

  “You’d sure have to bruise me to get a needle in my leg,” Dirk said. “I think he shot up with something bad, chronic or not.”

  “Then we should have found a kit at the scene,” Savannah told him. “At least a syringe or something.”

  “It’s a medical clinic,” Dr. Liu said. “There are needles and vials of all sorts of things all over the place. You probably wouldn’t have noticed, even if there had been something there.”

  “That’s true,” Savannah agreed. To Dirk she said, “We ought to go back over there and look around... now that we have some idea what to look for.”

  Dirk sniffed. “A needle and a syringe... at a medical clinic. Oh joy. That’ll be sorta like looking for a piece of hay in a haystack.”

  Savannah felt the residue of communal sadness the moment she stepped across the threshold into Emerge’s lobby. At the front desk, Myrna sat with her head in her hands, softly crying.

  A sobbing Devon stood by the atrium window, her arms around Jeremy, who looked as though he, too, had been weeping. The only one who wasn’t crying was a young, dark-haired woman in a white nurse’s uniform, who stood behind Myrna, rubbing the receptionist’s shoulders.

  Myrna looked up when Savannah and Dirk approached, her eyes red and swollen. “Hello, Sargent Coulter,” she said. “Hi, Savannah. I guess you’ve heard about our bad news.”

  Savannah was a little surprised at the apparent depth of Myrna’s grief. While having a drink with the woman, she had gotten the idea that Myrna wasn’t all that crazy about Sergio. Resented and disliked him, in fact.

  But Savannah knew from personal experience that, even if you couldn’t stand someone, it was sobering and shocking if they died unexpectedly.

  If nothing else, it reminded you of your own mortality, and that alone was enough to ruin your day.

  “Yes, I heard,” Savannah said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” Dirk added with a bit less of a sympathetic tone. “What are you guys doing here? There was crime tape across the front door. Nobody was supposed to be in here.” Devon and Jeremy had left their places by the atrium and strolled over toward the desk area. Jeremy spoke up. “The medical examiner’s people removed the tape over the front door just a while ago,” he said. “And they said we could be here in the lobby and in some of the rooms on the west side of the building. They left the tape across the hallway there, blocking our way into the east side where Sergio... where the body was found. And they told us to stay out of there until you released it.”

  “Good.” Dirk headed toward the cordoned off area with Savannah behind him.

  “How come she gets to go in there and we don’t?” Devon objected as Savannah walked past her.

  “Because she’s with me,” Dirk shot back. “Any more dumb questions?”

  Then he paused and looked back over his shoulder at the young woman in the nurse’s uniform. “Who are you?” he asked. “Bridget O’Reilly,” she replied.

  “You a nurse here?”

  She nodded.

  “Then you come with us.”

  As the three of them walked down the hallway toward the recently departed Sergio’s office, Dirk asked Nurse Bridget, “What is it you do here, exactly?”

  “Everything,” she replied. “I draw blood, give shots, dispense meds, assist in the surgeries.”

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “Only about six months.”

  “Did you like the doctor?” Savannah asked. “And Mr. D’Alessandro?”

  “The doctor was good to me. I hate the idea that something might have happened to her.”

  “What about him?” Dirk said. “Was he good to you, too?” Bridget’s Irish blue eyes suddenly looked a bit guarded. Then she said, “Mr. D’Alessandro and I had a pleasant enough working relationship.”

  “And that was his idea, I’ll bet,” Savannah said, quickly scanning the nurse’s pleasant enough figure.

  “What’s that?” Bridget asked.

  “That your relationship remain professional. I would imagine that was more your idea than Mr. D’Alessandro’s.”

  She looked uncomfortable with Savannah’s brand of frankness, but she nodded. “Yes, I suppose you could say it was more my idea than his.”

  “Do you know of anyone who would want to do either or both of them any harm?” Dirk asked.

  “Well...” She mulled it over for a moment. “I guess there were some people who weren’t all that pleased with the results of their surgeries. Some patients have very high expectations. They think they’ll achieve some sort of physical perfection and then their lives will be much happier. And of course, that’s an unrealistic expectation.”

  “Anybody in particular more disappointed than normal?” Dirk asked.

  “Maybe a couple.”

  “Could you give us their names?” Savannah said.

  Bridget looked horrified at the very thought. “Oh, we guard our patients’ anonymity very carefully at the Mystic Twilight spa. If word got out that we had released their names—”

  “Look, Nurse Bridget,” Dirk interjected. “I appreciate the fact that you want to protect your patients and all that noble stuff. But we have a dead person, maybe two, and I don’t have time to worry about whose face-lift is going to be public knowledge, if you know what I mean. If you can think of anybody who was upset with either Dr. Du Bois or Mr. D’Alessandro, you’d better spit it out.”

  “I’ll make a list for you,” she said, “if you promise me that you won’t tell where you got it.”

  “I’ll cover you,” he said with sudden and unexpected kindness. “Don’t worry about it. I like nurses. I have a lot of respect for what they do. They took good care of me when I got shot in the line of duty.”

  Oh, no, Savannah thought. Here we go again. The “Bullet in the Ass” story that she’d heard a few hundred times too many. She liked to think she was as compassionate and empathetic as anyone. But when it came to Dir
k’s barely-grazed right buttock, she had run out of sympathy in 1999.

  “Here we are,” she announced brightly as they reached the door to D’Alessandro’s office. “Let’s check in here first.”

  They entered the office, and after a quick look around, Savannah decided that it looked just the same as it had when she had last been in here. It had the neat, tidy appearance of a worker who did precious little work. Nothing appeared to be out of place. Not a pen or pencil in sight.

  “Let me ask you something bluntly, Nurse Bridget,” Dirk said. “To the best of your knowledge, did Mr. D’Alessandro use illegal drugs?”

  The nurse looked genuinely shocked at the very idea. “No, not at all. He drank socially.” She paused, then added, “And he was... well... very sociable. But other than that, nothing.”

  “How about prescription drugs?” Savannah asked. “Was he on any sort of medication that you know of?”

  “No, and if he were, I think I would know. I’m in charge of our med inventory and I would know if he was taking anything out of the cabinets.” She looked quizzically from Dirk to Savannah and back. “Why do you ask?”

  “There were some injection marks on his thigh,” Savannah said.

  “Oh, those.” A light dawned on Bridget’s face. “The B1? shots.”

  “What are those?” Dirk asked.

  “He gave himself B,, shots, claimed they kept his strength up. I gave him a couple when I first started working here, but then he got the nerve to start doing it himself.”

  “And he did this regularly?”

  “Yes. Once a month.”

  “Did he do this here at work or at home?” Dirk said.

  “Here. It’s handy. We have the needles and syringes and gauze, and we keep his vials of B12 in the drug cabinet.”

  “Which room is the cabinet in?” Savannah asked.

  “Exam Room One, where I draw blood,” she replied.

  Dirk gave Savannah a quick glance. She knew the look: He was onto something. Or at least he thought he was.

  “Let’s go there,” he said. “Nurse Bridget, you lead the way.”