After autopsies the next day (two naturals: advanced heart disease in one, and liver failure from chronic alcohol abuse in the other), I brought the bone plates I’d dug out of John Doe #15 to Dr. Howe, looking for his advice about tracking down their provenance.
Howe loves a challenge. He put the battered plates under his reading light and examined them without comment. I waited—I knew better than to interrupt the chief on a consult. Finally, without looking up, he spoke. It wasn’t what I expected to hear.
“Why do you keep dodging the press on the architect thing?”
“I...what do you mean?”
“I’ve got a pile of messages from KnowNowSF, demanding I tell them what we’re hiding over here. Are we hiding something over here, Dr. Teska?”
“No! Of course we aren’t...”
“Then why are you giving reporters the impression that we are?”
“I didn’t! I mean, I just gave no comment, is all. If they want to read into that—”
Howe fixed his small sharp eyes on me. “Oh, they will. Believe me, they will. They take ‘no comment’ as a provocation.”
“I’d just come off the stand. I figured my testimony should speak for itself—the reporters were in there watching it, after all.”
“They won’t give up. I’m surprised Emil Kashiman never taught you that. A high-profile case, with the unusual—even lurid—circumstances in which that body was discovered, they’re not going to take ‘no comment’ for an answer. Come up with a better one. I’m certainly not going to do it for you.”
He returned his attention to the surgical plates. “Now—to this little puzzle. Orthopedic device manufacturers get gobbled up by one another all the time. This company might not even exist anymore. If you do manage to figure out who the logo belongs to, call their regulatory department. The bean counters might know which hospital purchased it, and when. Be careful, though—you could fall down a rabbit hole trying to secure an ID this way. Don’t burn too much time on it.”
“Is there a database for these devices?” I asked.
“No, too much HIPAA. The surgeon might talk to you if you can track him down, but I doubt anyone else will.”
Dr. Howe handed me the plates and repeated the admonition not to spend too much time on a search that was unlikely to produce a name to hang on this John Doe.
That reminded me of another thing I wanted to ask him. “We need to come up with some provision for temporary body storage until we can clear out the remaining quake victims. The cooler is full of pouches stacked on top of each other. This John Doe was leaking decomp fluid onto a gurney and the cooler floor.”
Dr. Howe went suddenly officious. “The problem isn’t body storage—it’s turnaround time. Get those deaths processed and certified, and the bodies released to funeral homes, and we won’t have a storage problem.”
I managed, for once, not to speak my mind. The gray-haired day-shift 2578 out in the Ops Shop must’ve overheard, because he motioned me to join him at his desk on my way out.
“No way the boss is going to bring in a refrigerated trailer, Jessie,” he croaked quietly in his cigarette-scarred baritone. “Imagine if the press caught wind? Nobody can see the state of the cooler from outside these walls, remember.”
He had a point. Even if the FEMA money were available for an auxiliary morgue trailer—and it might well be, after the quake—Chief Howe wouldn’t request it. He prided himself on running a tight ship. As far as he was concerned, we were just going to have to work harder to process those John and Jane Does, and clear the cooler faster than new arrivals could fill it.
The investigator asked to look at the bone plates. There was a trick to interpreting the information stamped onto them, he said. One of the codes was the lot number—a batch of devices produced and shipped from the factory together—and the other was the serial number, individual to each one. He didn’t recognize the corporate logo, but brought up a web page and his screen filled with a riot of medical-device company banners and badges. We scrolled through together—and found it. The X overlapping an O belonged to OstereonX Devices. The 2578 Googled them. OstereonX had been bought out a few years before by, sure enough, a bigger device company called Moss Medical.
And then the Ops Shop hotline rang. It was police dispatch, reporting a fresh body. The veteran 2578 said, “Okay, just a sec,” into the receiver and put his hand over it. “We gotta go fetch this. Sorry I can’t help more.”
I mouthed I owe you one. The investigator winked back. “Good luck working the phones,” he said. “You’re gonna need it.”
I went straight to my office and called Moss Medical, Inc. and navigated the phone tree until I got the regulatory department. The lady on the other end told me they had inherited the old records from OstereonX on paper, and had put them all in storage.
“Don’t you have anything on this serial number?”
“No, ma’am.”
“How about the lot number?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, as sweetly as I could, “I guess I’m confused. You sell these things, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So somewhere you have a record of those sales. Right?”
The lady sighed, and told me she would transfer me to the sales department.
The man in sales wished he could help me, he really did—but then he repeated over and over again in slightly different ways that he didn’t know anything about serial numbers for specific products made by one of the companies that his conglomerate had glomerated at some point in the murky past.
“How about lot numbers?”
“Well, now, maybe. Why don’t you give ’em to me.”
“L four one eight.”
“For both of ’em?”
“Yes.”
“Four one eight, four one eight,” the salesman muttered. “Hang on just a tick, will you, please...?”
He put me on hold. I put him on speakerphone and bathed my office in the Muzak while trying to multitask by filling in the details on another autopsy report. But I’m no good at multitasking, so I was glad to hear the salesman come back on, jaunty as can be.
“It just so happens that the lot numbers for those OstereonX products were recorded in a PDF database. I can tell you that lot number four one eight went to the San Francisco Department of Public Health in California.”
“When?”
“Ten years ago.”
The Department of Public Health meant San Francisco General Hospital. Surgery at the General meant the recipient of the two bone plates would likely have been an indigent person. I knew my Very Important Doe had been homeless, at least at the time of his death. So next I called up the General and asked for Orthopedics.
“We don’t keep those records,” said the nurse who answered, and transferred me to someone in the hospital stockroom. I had a hard time hearing the guy—he had a heavy accent across a fuzzy phone line—and we took to barking block sentences back and forth like sailors in a gale. He shuffled through his records, then told me which operating room had taken those two devices, on which date—and the name of the surgeon.
I barked my gratitude, hung up, and called Orthopedics again. I got the same nurse, and asked for the surgeon.
“He’s in the OR right now.”
“Can I leave a message?”
“We don’t do that. He doesn’t check in with us.”
“Well, can you give me his cell phone, or email or something?”
“No.”
“So how do I get in touch with him?”
“After he scrubs out, he heads straight over to Mission Bay for clinic. If I was you, that’s where I’d go looking for him.”
Next on my agenda was another irritating task: I had to call Natalie Haring and tell her it was time to get her husband’s corpse out of our cooler. I watched my death’s-head clock while I mulled ways to get that message through. The clock’s tiny pirate cutlass had cut through fifty-seven seconds when I came up with a tactic.
“It’s come to my attention that your husband’s body is still being held in our storage space,” I said, after Natalie and I had exchanged phone pleasantries.
“Yes?”
“It’s been three weeks. That’s quite a bit longer than we typically store bodies. Is there anything I can do to help you get your husband’s remains to a funeral home? Is it a matter of cost...?”
“Of course not.”
Bingo.
“Oh,” I said. “Then I’ll be happy to have our own mortuary professionals prepare things from this end. Please tell your funeral home they can arrange for transportation anytime today.”
“I...wish it were that simple, Doctor. You see, we’re having some differences of opinion in the family, and my husband’s will was unfortunately imprecise as to the disposition of his remains.”
“I understand, Mrs. Haring—but the decedent’s will is not the authority in these matters. The desire of the next of kin is, and that’s you.”
“Again, if only it were that simple.” I waited and said nothing. So did Natalie. Eventually, she seemed to have a new idea. “If you would be kind enough to find the time to come to our business office, Dr. Teska, I’m certain you could help us resolve the matter.”
Fat chance, lady. I had thirty-something open cases to contend with. I couldn’t say that, though. So, seeking another excuse, I asked where their business office was.
“Two Bridgeview Way.”
“Where’s that?”
“Right by the hospital complex in Mission Bay.”
That’s where I was headed to track down the surgeon who had fixed up John Doe #15’s arm. I could kill two birds with one stone; if I actually showed up, in person, to mediate the Haring family dispute, maybe I could get that high-profile corpse out of our office, and please my boss.
“What time?” I said.
The orthopedic surgeon was older but not old; important and impatient. I had barely landed in the ergonomic chair opposite his gleaming silver desk when he said, “Did the patient sign a waiver allowing device tracking for research?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, if he didn’t, then I can’t talk to you. HIPAA.”
“Doctor,” I said, “your patient is dead. He has no HIPAA.”
“You’re sure I did the surgery?”
“That’s what the operating room record says. The devices came out of a John Doe, and I need to ID him.”
I handed him the bone plates, and before he’d even turned them over he said, “OstereonX! That’s a good solid product.” He ran his fingers over the warped metal like a jeweler with a pawned masterpiece. “I think I remember this procedure—it’s not often I do both a radius and ulna in the same patient. Why didn’t you just unscrew them? I did such careful work on those bones, and now, look at this.”
“Like I said, I’m trying to put a name on a dead man here. Can you help?”
“It was about four years ago, I think. Let me look at my database.” He swiveled his computer monitor so I couldn’t see it. Okay, fine. I took the opportunity to daydream out the window at the sweeping southerly view, with San Bruno Mountain on one side and the bay on the other. It occurred to me that I was looking down on my own little dumpside office, out there somewhere. Closer, right below us, a crane was swiveling back and forth. Mission Bay is usually crawling with cranes. What struck me about this one, as I watched it, was that it seemed to be running in reverse. It was demolishing a building, not erecting one. Mission Bay is landfill—and landfill turns to jelly in an earthquake.
“Hope they were insured,” I muttered.
“Who?” said the surgeon.
“Down there. Quake damage, right?”
“Oh. I don’t know.”
“Was it bad around here?”
“I don’t know. I was home in Marin. Ah—here we go.” He pointed a steady, slender finger at the screen. “Oh, yes. Patient came to the ER at the General. He had fractures of both bones of his distal right forearm. Usually I can stabilize the ulna, and the radius reduces on its own. Not this time. That’s why he needed both plates.”
He laid them out on his desk and fiddled with them. “I really had to squeeze this screw in right here. And the end piece had to go nearly to the condyle of the wrist.” He beamed. “I did a great job with this! Textbook.”
“Doctor,” I said.
“Yes?”
“What is the patient’s name?”
“Oh. I don’t know. In my spreadsheet he’s Trauma Blue 1343.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s hospital admissions shorthand for a John Doe.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. You admitted this guy to the hospital and did surgery on him, and you never found out his name?”
I’d offended him. “This is trauma service at the General. I fix them up and send them off. The only reason I kept this spreadsheet was for my own personal research into complication rates. No disrespect, Dr. Teska, but the way we work might be a little different than what you’re used to down at the morgue, where your patients lie around and don’t get any deader. We deal with emergencies.”
No disrespect? Pocałuj mnie w dupę! But instead of telling the surgeon to kiss my ass, I took a deep breath, kept my voice even, and asked him if he could describe the patient.
“I have him down as a sixty-two-year-old Black male.”
“How about radiology?”
“What do you mean?”
I pointed at the backside of his paper-thin computer screen. “Is his name on the radiology report in the chart?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have his chart on hand. If you want to look at the films, you’ll have to go ask radiology to find them.”
“I don’t have a name for the patient, Doctor.”
The surgeon made a show of flipping the cuff of his lab coat to consult an expensive watch. “It’s my clinic day, and I have patients waiting. If you’ll give me your email, I’ll see if I can get somebody from records to look for the full file.”
He seemed awfully blithe about it. So I gave him my card, and then I pulled out my heavy gold Deputy Chief Medical Examiner shield and slid it across his desk.
“This is my badge number. Please make sure you reference it in the correspondence.”
It spooked him. “Hold on...what kind of case is this? Am I going to get subpoenaed?”
“Right now, this is a simple matter of identifying a John Doe. Further steps will depend on how quickly we can get a name on this individual. If the radiology images you took in the operating room match the images I took in the autopsy suite, we will have a positive identification. Those X-rays are crucial to this open case, which is part of a homicide investigation.”
The surgeon displayed a good deal more animation. He declared he would get right on it, and wrote the badge number on a notepad. Then he wrote it again on his desk calendar—and underlined it. Twice.
I pocketed my shield and thanked the surgeon for his time. We shook hands. I put a good tight squeeze on him.
It was a short walk along a sterile street to the offices of Haring & Symond, in a twenty-story building at number 2 Bridgeview Way. The entire district around the new hospital complex had sprung up all at once, with planned-city efficiency, and the place had a raw feel to it, like walking through the set of a dystopian sci-fi movie.
Haring & Symond occupied the penthouse. Natalie Haring greeted me in the lobby with more warmth than I expected, and walked me down a series of hallways until we were outside a glassed-in conference room with a stunning view of the Bay Bridge. The chairs were filled with men and women in serious dark suits. I was surprised when Natalie stopped there, opened the door, and invited me to enter.
The serious suits were lawyers. They jumped out of their chairs and we shook hands in a frenzy of self-introduction. Jeffrey Symond, the late Mr. Haring’s business partner, was seated at the head of the table. He didn’t get up. Natalie positioned herself to stand beside him. Everyone in the glass room directed their attention at me. They meant business.
I had come there expecting a private conference with a widow. Instead, I’d walked into a shiver of sharks. Natalie saw that she’d caught me flat-footed, and pressed her advantage.
“The reason we’ve invited you here today, Dr. Teska, is because we have some questions about the medical examiner case surrounding my husband’s death.”
“What kind of questions?”
“They involve insurance matters.” She settled herself smoothly into the seat next to Jeff Symond and nodded to one of the suits, who pulled out a chair for me at the other end of the table. I sat; what else could I do, except maybe turn tail and run? Besides, I was curious to see where this interrogation was going to go—and I wasn’t under oath. I didn’t have to answer a damn thing.
“You see, Doctor, my husband Leopold was a conservative and prudent man, and carried several life insurance policies. He also had separate policies through the corporation, as riders on our umbrella insurance, which have provisions to provide payment if he were to die unexpectedly while at work. Even though we have filed all the proper death claims paperwork with the holders of these policies, none of those companies has released the money they owe us. Owe me, that is. As the beneficiary. We find this...puzzling.”
I asked Natalie, with as much courtesy as I could muster, what exactly she wanted me to do about it. “I have closed the case and have issued the death certificate. That’s all the insurance companies usually require. After that, I’ve seen families wait six months or more for the payout.”
“This is a special case, you see. It’s not just about me personally. It’s about us, Haring & Symond, as a business. Our cash flow—”
A lawyer cut her off. “Mrs. Haring would just like to know from you, Doctor, how you can aid us in expediting the payout process for—”
And a different lawyer cut off that lawyer. “Just a minute. If the corporation is having cash flow issues, an insurance payment is not a fitting vehicle for—”
The first lawyer cut off the lawyer who had just cut him off, and they got into a muddled little spat. Yet another lawyer tried to mediate, but it wasn’t working. I looked to Natalie. She had clammed up. I didn’t like it.
I cast my voice loudly and directly at the dead man’s lifelong friend and partner, who clearly did not want to be in the room at all.
“Mr. Symond—what is your role here?”
Symond went from miserable to alarmed, and stammered a half answer before his lawyer stopped him. Another lawyer stepped up and encouraged Symond to answer the question, and Symond’s lawyer jumped down his throat.
It was becoming clear that this meeting had been Natalie Haring’s idea, and that Jeffrey Symond thought it was a terrible one. So did all the lawyers, who had probably tried and failed to talk her out of it. They were all there for damage control. Natalie wanted something out of me. I figured, since I was already there and all, maybe I could get something out of her, too. Maybe she could help me further my investigation.
I ignored the squabbling attorneys and fixed my attention on Natalie. “Mrs. Haring, do you know a man named Samuel Urias?”
“No.”
I couldn’t tell if that was the truth. She was certainly holding something back.
“How about you, Mr. Symond.”
Jeffrey Symond sat up in his chair. “The union guy? Yes, I know him. I’m down at that construction site most every day, so I guess you could say we work together—”
The lawyer looming over Symond put a hand on his shoulder. “Mr. Symond is here in his role as a corporate officer only,” he said, “and will not be answering any questions about the criminal case that involves Leopold Haring’s death.”
“Hey,” I replied coldly, “you people asked me here. Now you want to stop me asking questions?”
I shifted my focus to Natalie’s lawyer. “Then why should I stay? You don’t have a subpoena and this isn’t a deposition. You can’t compel me to do squat. I’m only still sitting in this chair because Mrs. Haring lost her husband, and it is my ethical duty to help answer any of her questions that are germane to my investigation of that death.”
And I need to get that dead body out of my overcrowded morgue, I did not add.
I looked right at Natalie. “I can’t go outside the bounds of that investigation.”
She didn’t respond. The meeting was definitely not following the script she had drafted in her head.
“We don’t want you to exceed the limits of your investigation, Dr. Teska,” a man said. I hadn’t noticed him there, in the recesses of the conference room—and he hadn’t approached to offer his hand during the feeding frenzy. He was older and more expensively dressed than the other lawyers. A young female colleague, in a tailored wool suit that radiated institutional power, flanked him.
“We just want to ask you one thing,” the older lawyer said.
“What’s that?”
“Did you receive any calls from any insurance companies, asking about the cause and manner of death in this case?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And what did you tell them?”
“I never called them back. I closed the case before I even had the chance to.”
The older lawyer affected an expression of puzzlement. “How did that happen?”
“They called me while the case was still pending, and now it’s closed. The death certificate is finalized. I assume they will receive my report through the usual administrative channels.”
The older lawyer nodded to his colleague. She stepped forward and held out a slender folder. “We want you to contact the insurance carriers directly, please.”
I didn’t take the folder. It hung in her hand over the table, then she put it down in front of me.
The older lawyer spoke again. “We request that you make it clear to the claims officers that your investigation has concluded, that you have certified this death as a homicide, and that Samuel Urias killed Leopold Haring. That’s all.”
“Oh, is that all? You’re confusing me with a police detective. And I don’t believe we met, Mr....?”
“Berwick.” He strode over with hand outstretched, and I rose to shake it. “Douglas Berwick.”
I knew that name. It was the middle one in a set of three that adorned the masthead of the biggest and most powerful law firm on the West Coast.
“I don’t determine who is a suspect, Mr. Berwick. You want to talk to Homicide Inspector Keith Jones.”
“Inspector Jones is a busy man, and he’s moved on to other cases.”
“Oh, that is a lie coming out of your mouth, Mr. Berwick.” The lawyer recoiled in surprise, and his colleague almost toppled off of her Zanottis. “You know exactly why these companies won’t pay out.”
The room went dead silent. Then, finally, Jeffrey Symond said, “Why?”
I turned to him. “All these lawyers know why, Mr. Symond. I’ll let one of them explain it to you.”
“No,” he shot back. “Tell me what you mean by that. You know why the insurance companies won’t pay out? Well, I don’t, and it’s my ass on the line here.”
The lawyer closest to Symond whispered something in his ear. Symond brushed him off and shot up out of the chair.
“No. My best friend is dead—murdered, brutally—and our company, his legacy, needs that insurance money, or else we’re going to go under. Like, next month.”
The lawyers sat there with their mouths clamped shut. Jeffrey Symond leaned over the conference table and continued.
“Did you know that Leo and I started our first company together when we were twenty-six, Dr. Teska? In a garage. Literally. Leopold didn’t even have a work permit—he was here from Austria on a student visa, and I had to pay him under the table, mostly in pizza. So, please. Tell me why the insurance money hasn’t come through, because I have already lost Leo and I am on the brink of losing our company.”
Mr. Berwick and his aide stood stock-still and stony, but all the other lawyers looked like their heads were about to explode. I knew why: they couldn’t stop me from speaking up if I wanted to. I also knew that if I didn’t speak up, then nobody else was going to. I decided that Jeffrey Symond deserved to know the truth.
“In my professional experience, Mr. Symond, there is one clear category of circumstance when the insurance companies would be dragging their feet like this. I’ve seen it happen before—when the beneficiary of the insurance policy is considered a suspect in a homicide.”
I turned my gaze to Natalie Haring. She shot daggers back.
“But the union guy killed Leo!” Symond cried. He seemed to be sincerely shocked. He also seemed to be either naive, or dumb as a box of rocks.
“That’s why all these attorneys are here, Mr. Symond,” I said. “They’re worried that I may not be convinced the forensic evidence supports the accusation against Samuel Urias. That’s why they really asked me here—to conduct their own little cross-examination.”
I turned to the lawyer at my elbow and said “How’s it going so far?” Someone in the room swallowed a snicker.
Symond sank back into the chair. “What reason did they give you for calling this meeting, Mr. Symond?” I asked.
He started an honest answer, but then, dumb or not, decided better. He took a beat and said, “Business reasons.”
“Ah, yes. Business. These insurance policies that your company took out against Leo’s death—if they pay up, who benefits? Who controls the company now, with Leo deceased? Is it you and Mrs. Haring?”
Symond’s lawyer leaned down again, and again murmured in his ear. The lawyer was just covering his ass, though. Anyone could see there was no way Symond intended to answer me. After all, as Leopold Haring’s business partner, Jeffrey Symond was beneficiary of any life insurance policies that paid out to the company. In the cold, clear eyes of the claims adjusters, Symond would be a suspect in Haring’s homicide, too. He might not even have known it until I pointed it out to him.
I rose. I didn’t see anything good coming for me in staying in that room. Before I could even turn around, though, Mr. Berwick asked me if I had fielded any calls from Oskar Haring.
Kurwa. It was a simple trap, but a tight one. If I said nothing or refused to answer, it would serve as confirmation that I had interviewed the dead man’s troubled son. Saying no would be a lie, and even though I wasn’t under oath, I’m not a liar unless I need to be.
“Yes, I have.”
Natalie Haring leaped up and flipped out.
“Why—? Why would you drag Oskar into this? He’s not responsible for anything he says! What did he tell you?”
Two of her lawyers tried to reel her in, but Natalie wasn’t letting up.
“My son is bipolar. He was off his medications when he assaulted his father. He’s been...difficult to manage. Recently he’s started fantasizing. And...and he’s getting worse...”
I looked at Berwick. He wasn’t smiling, exactly—any more than a computer chess program smiles when it puts you in check.
Natalie’s voice returned to an even timbre, but the anguish was still behind it. “It’s not his fault, the lies he tells. It’s not his fault. But, Doctor—that doesn’t mean he isn’t lying to you, all the same.”
Heads turned toward the glass wall that looked out to the hallway. There was a ruckus coming from the direction of the lobby—indistinct raised voices, something banging.
The sound froze Natalie Haring. Jeffrey Symond bolted upright in his seat. He said, “Oh, no.”
Oskar Haring appeared from behind the plate glass, striding for the conference room door, the receptionist, flustered, in tow.
O wilku mowa, a wilk tu.
Speak of the Devil.
Oskar threw open the conference room door. Jeffrey Symond jumped out of his chair and moved behind his lawyers. “Call security!” he yelled at the receptionist.
“I did, Mr. Symond,” she said. “They’re—”
Oskar reached into his pocket.
“Oskar, no—!” Symond cried, and cowered. The lawyers crooked their arms and crouched sideways in panic.
Oskar’s hand came out. It held a plastic card.
“I have the key, Jeff—remember? I work here too!”
The lawyers released a collective breath and brushed at their suits, trying to look unfazed. Jeffrey Symond was still hiding behind them. “You used to!” he sneered back.
“Jeffrey—” said Natalie Haring in a warning tone. She had snapped out of her spell.
“He can’t keep doing this!”
“Not now, Jeffrey.”
“Go get security,” Symond ordered the receptionist. She nodded and started out the door.
“Laura,” said Natalie Haring quietly. The receptionist stopped. “No police. Tell Duane that too, you understand? No police.”
Laura the receptionist nodded again, then left, keeping her nervous eyes on Oskar as she retreated down the hall.
Natalie turned to her son and calmly asked him if he was carrying the gun.
“No!” Oskar spat, and pointed at Symond. “He has it! And I want it back!”
“I do not,” said Symond.
“Do so!”
“Jeffrey does not have the gun, Oskar,” Natalie said. “You don’t either?”
“Of course not, Mother! But it’s mine, and I want it back.”
“It’s your grandfather’s gun, you brat,” said Symond.
“It’s mine! It’s mine!” Oskar was in a full-body clench, like an electric current was coursing through him.
“Shh,” said Natalie. Oskar relaxed immediately at the sound.
“Papa had the gun when he left us, Mama,” he said. Then, for the first time, he noticed me standing next to him. “You’re that doctor. What are you doing here?”
This time I was confident I should keep my mouth shut, and I did. One of the lawyers spoke up and said the meeting was to address business concerns involving the death certificate.
“The death certificate that says it’s a homicide,” Oskar replied, fixing me with his unblinking eyes. “Did you know about the gun, Doctor? It’s a Rast und Gasser, an antique revolver from Austria, but it works just fine. I take it target shooting just to make sure. Beautiful machining, never fouls. My grandfather gave it to me, and my papa took it away. He had to fight me for it, and I lost. He was a strong man, my papa. Did you know he was armed when he was murdered?”
I didn’t respond.
“Did you find a revolver on his body?”
“No.”
Natalie’s lawyer said, “You don’t have to answer his questions, Doctor.”
“My autopsy report is public record. There was no gun.”
“He had it when he was murdered,” Oskar said. “When he was stabbed in the back. Do you think a stranger could have snuck up on my papa and stabbed him in the back? Not while he was armed. Not my papa.”
There was action in the hallway again. A couple of uniformed security guards and a gorilla-shaped man bursting out of his business suit were coming in a hurry. Natalie caught the eye of the gorilla, and made the tiniest shake of her head. The gorilla stopped the other two. They hung back, just outside the conference room.
Natalie turned to her son. “Oskar, maybe Papa locked the gun away somewhere before he went to the construction site. Maybe he—”
From the corner where he still lurked, law partner Douglas Berwick cut her off. “Mrs. Haring, I’m going to have to instruct you to stop speaking now.”
Oskar sneered. “Yeah, say no more, Mother.” He wheeled back to me. “Do you know why Mr. Berwick over there wants my mother to shut up, Doctor?”
Then, when again I didn’t answer, he hissed, “Because she killed my papa.”
He raised both arms to shoulder height, fingers thrust with violence at Natalie Haring, and at Jeffrey Symond.
“They killed my papa!”
Symond pushed his way past his lawyers. “How dare you! You lunatic! How dare you...!”
Oskar ignored him and addressed himself, perfectly calmly, to me again. “The man they arrested had no reason to kill my father. It’s a setup. Mama and Uncle Jeff killed my papa.”
“And you’ll inherit everything if we’re in jail, won’t you, you lying little psycho!” Symond yelled.
He was still standing with his lawyers, livid but clearly frightened of Oskar. Natalie Haring had frozen up again.
Symond went on. “Even if we’re only arrested, that’s probably enough for you. You’re secondary beneficiary on all those policies. You’ll get everything, won’t you? You’ll get the company! Our company—!”
One of the lawyers surrounding Symond grabbed him by the arm and hauled him to the back of their scrum, talking to him in a low voice about possibly shutting the fuck up already.
Mr. Berwick stepped forward and came to me. “All right, Dr. Teska. Thank you for coming. We’re going to ask you to leave now.”
I didn’t.
Natalie nodded to the security squad outside the door. They entered and flanked it.
For a moment nobody did anything. Natalie didn’t actually want to throw me out, of course; she was hoping I would take the hint. I didn’t want go, but didn’t want Dr. James Howe getting an angry call from Douglas Berwick, either. So I stood.
“I’m a principal in this company too, don’t forget,” Oskar suddenly yelled, in the general direction of the clot of lawyers that had swallowed Jeffrey Symond.
Symond elbowed his way out of it. He noticed the security guards. He stood tall, took a single step in Oskar’s direction, and said, “You’re a figurehead, Oskar. A fucking garden gnome.”
Oskar turned his eyes to the ceiling and started to mutter. Nobody tried to stop Symond this time.
“Your father was the smartest man I ever met, and he knew just how dangerous you are—to your mother, to our company. To yourself! He gave you harmless busywork tasks around here so he could keep an eye on you.”
Oskar was fidgeting, his feet moving in something more than a shuffle and less than a pace line, his gaze shifting from ceiling to floor and back. He was talking to someone inside his own head. He ended up toe to toe with Symond, a lawyer at each of their shoulders.
“Leo used to complain that he always had to make sure you were taking your pills,” Symond said. “Looks like you aren’t. Again.” The lawyer closest to Symond put a hand on his shoulder and tried to get him to back him away from Oskar, but Symond only leaned closer. “Looks like, with your daddy gone, you’ve taken a dive off the deep end, and now you’re...”
From the mists of memory, my clinical psychiatry rotation in medical school came back to me, and I saw what was happening.
“Wait—!”
I was too late. The other lawyer had already raised his hand and put it firmly on Oskar Haring’s shoulder. The moment he did, Oskar swiveled, grabbed the man, and threw him across the table. Then he attacked Jeffrey Symond.
Symond tried to fight back, but it was no use. He was angry, but Oskar had gone haywire. He was flailing, striking out at everyone around him, but mostly at Jeffrey Symond. Two lawyers made the mistake of trying to pull him off. He bit one and laid the other one out with a punch to the jaw.
As the security team pushed their way through the suits, my ear isolated a strange sound behind the yells of the lawyers and Natalie’s screaming (Natalie was screaming) and Symond’s grunts under the frenzy of blows. The sound made its way through the others because it was so...wrong. It was laughter. Hyena laughter. Oskar Haring was laughing while he savaged Jeffrey Symond.
The security team succeeded in clearing away the lawyers and getting a grip on Oskar’s windmilling arms. He kicked at them, but they were big men, and professionals. It took some effort, but they got him pinned, face-down, on the floor.
I was taking shelter behind my chair, but couldn’t stay out of the situation when I saw that. I’ve watched countless closed circuit television tapes from jails and bus stops and outside convenience stores, of security professionals pinning frenzied people face-down that way. Those frenzied people end up on my autopsy table.
“Hey! Duane!” I shouted, guessing the gorilla in the suit was the one Natalie had instructed the receptionist to talk to about keeping the police away.
It worked. Duane the gorilla looked at me, puzzled. I said, “You’re going to kill that man if you don’t get him up.”
“Shut up, lady,” Duane said. He had a bright red welt on his cheekbone where Oskar had landed a punch, or maybe a kick.
“I’m a doctor. I’m telling you, he can’t breathe that way. He is going to go into respiratory arrest, and it’s going to happen quick. Get him on his feet or sit him up, right now.”
Duane ignored me. One of the uniformed guards had a knee between Oskar’s shoulder blades. The other one produced a set of flex-cuffs, and fastened his arms behind his back.
That was the last straw. The clock was running out. I pulled out my phone and scanned the flustered crowd until I found Douglas Berwick. “I’m calling 911 right now unless those goons get off him and let him breathe,” I said to the alpha lawyer.
Berwick was no fool; or, at least, he had read forensic case studies about the lethality of prone restraint in people undergoing a psychotic break. “Get him up,” he said to Duane.
“We don’t work for you,” Duane growled.
“Do what she says!” It was Jeffrey Symond. He was being tended to by Natalie and some of the suits. Someone said something about first aid, and an ice pack.
Duane and the rest of the Haring & Symond security team grudgingly obeyed the chain of command. They dragged Oskar up and sat him on the sofa. Oskar was disoriented at first, but then he lolled his head around, saw the huge men looming over him, and started laughing again. One of the uniformed goons looked like he would sincerely have liked to punch Oskar’s teeth down his throat.
Natalie leaped to her feet. She left Symond’s side to go to Oskar’s. She smoothed his hair and started talking to him in a low, comforting voice.
Oskar stopped laughing and started crying. He collapsed, hands still bound behind him, into his mother’s lap. Natalie lowered her lips to his ear and continued to soothe him.
Oskar’s voice came muffled, out of his mother’s lap. “Why, Mama...? Why did you do it? Why did you take him away?”
Natalie didn’t say anything to deny it. She just stroked and murmured.
Douglas Berwick touched my sleeve to get my attention.
“Thank you for your time, Dr. Teska.”
He didn’t seem the least bit ruffled. I nodded, and moved to the conference room door. I looked back. Oskar Haring was going catatonic. Natalie Haring stroked his hair mechanically, mechanically repeating that mommy loved him. Jeffrey Symond was back in that chair at the head of the table, slumped again, with an ice pack on his face.
“Excuse me.”
Mr. Berwick’s aide was coming through the door, and I was in her way. She carried another first aid kit.
I was relieved to be on neither the delivery end nor the receiving end, for once.