Thirteen
Brennan’s is located on Louisiana Street, just off Highway 59, an easy fifteen-minute ride from the Bellaire subdivision. Shelly and Sam arrived at the restaurant at the same time Matt did. Clark hadn’t arrived yet.
The building is an imposing brick structure, with dark green ivy covering most of the walls. Even at that early hour and with a steady drizzle falling, a line had formed at the front door. In spite of its expensive menu, the restaurant is immensely popular both with tourists and Houstonians.
As they entered, a young lady dressed as if she were going to the opera walked up to them with a clipboard in her hand. “Name, please?” she asked.
Shelly looked around at the crowd waiting for tables. “Any idea of how long it’ll be?” he asked.
She looked at him as if it shouldn’t matter how long they had to wait for the privilege of eating there. “Oh, about an hour,” she said.
Shelly frowned and Matt figured he was about to tell her to forget it. Shelly was famous for never, ever waiting in lines for anything. He’d once said his time in the army soured him on lines forever.
Just then, Damon Clark and Shooter walked in the door. The mâitre d’ came rushing over, his hand outstretched, almost shoving the hostess aside in his haste to welcome Damon.
“Mr. Clark, so glad to see you, sir. How many in your party?” he said with an oily smile.
Damon said, “Five, for smoking please, Jacques.”
“Follow me,” the man said, snapping his fingers at the nearest waiter and pointing at the stack of menus on a table near the doorway.
He led them through several dining rooms, each about the size of a normal room in a house. On the way, Matt recognized several doctors from the medical center.
Shelly waved, taking a few minutes to banter with the doctors, most of whom knew him from his teaching lectures. Matt hadn’t realized how popular he was with the staffs of the various hospitals, and was doubly impressed that he knew most of them by their first names.
At another table, Matt saw two third-year students sitting with older couples, probably their parents. The students were on ER rotation at the Taub and waved to Matt, but he didn’t remember their names. He resolved then to try and become better acquainted with the students on his service. Shelly was both a good example and a hard act to follow.
As they moved through the restaurant, Matt also noticed that the male patrons all seemed to have their eyes on Sam. He realized it was easy to be ignored when walking with her.
Finally, the mâitre d’ seated the group in a small, open courtyard under an overhang so the rain wouldn’t be a problem. There were trees and brightly colored flowers and bushes around an area floored with bricks that resembled the ancient streets of New Orleans.
Matt had been there once before, but it was evidently Sam’s first time. She glanced around the courtyard, her eyes wide. “This is beautiful!” she exclaimed.
Damon followed her gaze, as if seeing it for the first time. “Yes,” he agreed, “it is. And the food is quite good too.”
A waitress appeared and placed steaming cups of coffee in front of them without asking, before moving off to take an order at a neighboring table.
Damon smiled. “The coffee is chicory, just like they serve in New Orleans. If you’re not used to it, you may be surprised at the flavor.” He reached across the table and added heated cream to his brew. “You might want to add extra sugar and cream to dilute it a bit.”
Matt noticed for the first time that Clark looked haggard; his eyes were bloodshot and he was unshaven. Even his trademark three-piece suit looked as if it had been slept in. This case is really getting to him, Matt thought as he added the warm cream to his own coffee.
Clark took out his cigarettes and lighter and placed them in front of him on the table. He shook out a cigarette and lit it. After he took a deep swig of his coffee, he sank back in his chair with a sigh. “Doctors, were any of you in the service during the war?”
Shelly blinked, then answered, “Yes. I spent two years in Vietnam, at a field hospital.”
Matt shook his head no, mumbling that he had been in his residency at the time. Sam just smiled and said, “No, I was still in high school.”
Clark grinned at Shelly. “Then you know what it’s like to walk through a minefield.”
Shelly nodded, and Matt thought, I wonder where this is going.
“Doctors, I’m an experiment,” Damon said, out of the blue. He took another drag and watched the cloud of exhaled smoke rise, to be eaten and spit out by the ceiling fans over the courtyard. Finally, he continued, “I’m the first black man to rise to the rank of chief in the Houston Police Department, and chief of detectives is the most highly visible of all of the departments in the force.”
Matt nodded, while Shelly just looked at Clark, waiting for him to make his point in his own way.
“There are a thousand pairs of eyes watching every move I make, and at least half of them are hoping I’ll fall flat on my face.” He rubbed his eyes, making them even redder.
After they ordered breakfast—Damon recommending the eggs Benedict and pancakes with blueberry syrup, a Brennan’s specialty—the waitress left. As they sat and drank coffee and fresh-squeezed orange juice, Damon said, “In the past two weeks we have had two rather spectacular murders, murders in which Dr. Silver and his associate”—he nodded and smiled at Sam—“say the perpetrator drank the victim’s blood.”
Shelly held up his hand. “Wait a minute, Damon, we haven’t made that determination about the killings tonight yet.”
“Doc, I’ve seen a lot of murders and a lot of wounds, and I caught your comment about the lack of an appropriate amount of blood at the scene tonight.”
Shelly started to interrupt. “Yes, but . . .”
Clark waved his hand. “Don’t worry, I won’t hold you to it, but I agree. There should have been more blood, a lot more blood.”
He lit another cigarette off the butt of the first, his hands shaking slightly, betraying the tension he was under. “Let’s assume, for the moment, that your findings on this case are the same as on the other one. That means one of two things.”
Matt thought about the implications of that for a moment while the waitress served them. After she left, Sam said, “I think I see what you mean, Chief Clark. We may be seeing the first in a series of serial killings.”
Clark nodded and mumbled around a mouthful of poached eggs on an English muffin covered with hollandaise sauce, “Very good, Doc.”
“But, what’s the other possibility?” Matt asked.
Clark washed his food down with more coffee, then said, “That we’re in the middle of a series of serial killings that hasn’t been noticed until now.”
Shelly began, “That’s imposs . . . Wait a minute, you think there may have been more killings like these and the medical examiners and the police both failed to notice them?” He leaned back and said, “I find that hard to believe, Chief. What about you Matt? Do you recall any other murders like these coming through the emergency rooms in the past few months?”
“Well, the killing the other night was pretty spectacular, but I guess it’s not too unusual for a weekend at the Taub. If the residents or medical examiners were seeing similar killings, they’d notice a pattern.”
Clark stabbed a slice of pancake and stuffed it in his mouth. After he chewed and swallowed, his eyes on Shelly the entire time, he continued, “Not necessarily, Doc. Listen a minute. . . .” He leaned forward across the table and lowered his voice. “This city has a population of over two million people; twenty thousand cops patrol forty square miles of territory divided into twenty separate precincts. If the murderer was smart, he could spread out his kills. Chances are, none of the different officers involved would ever see more than one case, so there would be no reason to suspect a serial killer.”
“But, Damon, you’re forgetting the medical examiner’s office,” said Shelly. “They would notice and make a connection between such . . . unusual murders as these.”
Sam put her hand on Shelly’s arm to get his attention. “Just a minute, Shelly.” She sat there, lost in thought for a moment, before going on as if talking to herself. “There are seven pathologists in the medical examiner’s office, not counting the ME, who rarely does autopsies himself. They probably each work two or three murders a day, five or six days a week.” She looked at Shelly, then over at Chief Clark. “To be honest, if the autopsy the other night had been done by the ME’s office, I’ll bet it would have been signed out as a routine slasher case.”
Matt had to agree. With the increasing amount of carnage on Houston’s streets, it was easy to see the medical examiners being inundated into a sort of trance, where the unusual was missed in the never-ending procession of maimed and mutilated bodies passing through the morgue.
“Okay, Chief, we concede that it’s possible, and that Sam may be right. However, that still doesn’t explain why you involved me. Why not someone from the ME’s office?” Shelly asked.
“Shelly, I told you before how political this job is.” He leaned forward again and put his elbows on the table. “I know the ME to be a fair and impartial man, and I trust him. But, now that he’s out with a heart attack, there’s no one left over there that I would trust with information this sensitive. If we do in fact have a serial killer on our hands, I need some time to get a handle on him before his existence becomes public knowledge.”
He spread his hands. “You’re the only man I trust to work on this and keep what you find confidential.”
“Why?”
Clark pursed his lips and examined Shelly through narrowed eyes, as if trying to decide how much to tell him. “First of all, you’re apolitical and have no ax to grind with either the police department or me. You are smart and observant, and you noticed the strangeness of the first murder. More important, you weren’t afraid to state your findings in an official report.”
Shelly held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, you’ve flattered me into accepting the job. But tell me, why have you involved Matt in this—not that I’m complaining, you understand.” He looked over at Matt and smiled. “He’s got a knack for this forensic stuff, and I can use his help.”
Clark glanced at Matt. “Matt, I asked Shooter about you when I found out you two were friends. He said you can keep your mouth shut, and you have your fingers on the pulse of all of the emergency rooms in the medical center. I’ll need you to pass the word, discreetly, among the residents and private docs about what kind of murders we’re looking for. We need to know how often and when this madman is striking if we’re going to figure out his pattern and track him down.”
Matt could see why Clark was so successful as chief of detectives. He had a way of cutting through a mass of seemingly unrelated facts and finding the nuggets that would make his case seem plausible. He was also that rare breed of man, a born leader. With nothing more than a couple of possibly unrelated murders to go on, he had succeeded in convincing both Shelly and Matt to help.
Matt found he was excited. His second choice, after a career in medicine, had always been to be a detective—a modern Sherlock Holmes—and to follow in his father’s footsteps. Now Clark was giving him a chance to do both and be involved in what seemed to be the tracking down of a bizarre serial killer, the hardest type of criminal to catch.
Clark grabbed the check and stood up. “Let me get to work on the computers this morning while you arrange for the autopsy on the two latest victims. I’ll be in touch with you later today to let you know if we’ve found any pattern of killings with this MO.”
As Clark walked away, Shelly looked at his watch and said, “Uh-oh. I’m due to give a lecture to the freshman students in fifteen minutes. We’re gonna have to hustle, Sam.”
Sam glanced down at her jeans, white cotton shirt, and tennis shoes. “I can’t come to work dressed like this. I’ve got to go home and shower and change.”
Shelly frowned, then smiled and looked at Matt. “Matt, do you think you could spare the time to run Sam home so that I won’t be late to my lecture?”
Matt’s heart gave a little lurch. “Sure, no problem.”
* * *
The morning traffic was fierce, but Matt didn’t care. The longer it took him to get to Sam’s house, the more time he got to spend with her.
He always had the radio tuned to K-OLD, a station that played music from the sixties and seventies. He liked to joke that, like Christine, the car in the old Stephen King movie, it was the only station the ’Vette would pick up. He was surprised when Sam began to sing along with several of the tunes. When she said that golden oldies were favorites of hers, Matt told her that she was forgiven for not knowing what kind of car the ’Vette was. Old music was a particular favorite of his too.
Sam lived in a duplex in the Village, a small community between Rice University and the medical center. As Matt pulled up in front of her unit, she turned to him and said, “Would you like to come in and have some coffee while I shower and change?”
It was practically the first personal thing she’d said to him since they’d met. “Sure. You want me to wait and give you a ride back to the hospital?”
“If you’re not in a hurry. It’ll take me about twenty minutes, and then we can be on our way. My roommate and I share a car, and I don’t know just what her schedule is today.”
Sam opened the door, led Matt into the living room, and told him to make himself comfortable while she started the coffee, then disappeared into the kitchen.
As he sat there, the bedroom door opened and a woman shuffled out. She was short, about five feet two inches, had tousled black hair that was partially covering her face, and was dressed only in a large T-shirt that had a picture of Snoopy on the front.
She halfheartedly covered a prodigious yawn and stretched, looking around as if she couldn’t quite figure out where she was. As her eyes lighted on Matt, she said, “Hi. I’m TJ.”
“Hi, TJ, I’m Matt.”
Sam came into the room carrying two cups of coffee. “Matt, this is TJ, my roommate, but don’t ask her what the initials stand for.”
She handed one of the cups to Matt and the other to TJ. “Rough night?”
TJ answered, “Yeah. I was on call and a couple of gomers kept me up all night. The bastards had the mistaken idea that they could die on my service.”
Sam laughed. “I’ll bet you showed them.”
“Damn right. They were alive when I left this morning—kicking and screaming but alive.”
Sam looked over at Matt. “TJ’s a third-year resident in internal medicine.”
She looked back toward TJ. “Matt’s a professor of emergency medicine, and he’s consulting with Shelly and me on some cases.”
TJ raised her eyebrows and gave a low whistle. “Oh, a professor! Looks like you hit the jackpot, Sam.”
Matt blushed, but Sam just waved her hand at him as she turned and went into the bedroom.
TJ finished the coffee in two swallows. As she bent over to put the cup on a table next to the couch, she whispered, “You’d better be good to her, Matt, or I’ll kill you in some slow and particularly painful way.” Then she winked and shuffled tiredly back into the bedroom. At the door, she turned and waved. “Good night. I’m gonna grab a few more hours of shut-eye while I can.”
“Good night, TJ. It was nice meeting you.”
She pointed a finger at Matt, pursing her lips and trying to look stern. “You remember what I said, or I’ll come looking for you with a syringe filled with God knows what.”
A few minutes later Sam came out of the bedroom, slipping her white lab coat on. “Come on, Matt. Duty calls.”
On the way back to the medical center, Sam looked at Matt out of the corner of her eye and asked, “What did you think of TJ?”
“Cute, very cute.”
Sam punched him in the shoulder. “Cute? The woman has an IQ of a hundred and fifty and is one of the smartest medical residents in the country and all you can say is she’s cute?” She shook her head, a disgusted look on her face, as if she expected such a comment from a man.
“Okay, okay,” Matt said, realizing his mistake. “How about charming, intelligent, witty . . .”
As Sam nodded her head in agreement, Matt finished with, “And she has very nice legs too!”
That got him another punch in the shoulder, but it was worth it. It also got a laugh out of Sam, his first one. He decided to press his luck. “Is she going with anyone, seriously I mean?”
Sam looked over and arched an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”
“’Cause, I think she’d be just right for Shooter. He needs to meet a woman who will put him in his place.”
She thought for a moment, then smiled and nodded. “I think you’re right. That would be a fun match to watch.”
Heart in his throat, Matt took a chance. “How about seeing if she’ll go out with him on a blind date? Maybe we could double-date this weekend, if neither of you is on duty.”
Matt held his breath as she considered this, a slight scowl on her face. “I don’t know, Matt.” She glanced at him and her face softened. “I’ve dated a couple of doctors in the past, and it didn’t work out too well.”
Matt considered what to say next, finally deciding on, “Oh, and I thought you two were friends.”
She raised her eyebrows. “We are. What is that remark supposed to mean?” she asked, her voice flat.
Matt shrugged, keeping his eyes straight ahead. “Well, if you’re really her friend, how can you keep her from meeting a terrific guy like Shooter just because you’re afraid to go out with me?”
“Afraid? Listen, buster, I’m not afraid of anyone, male or female. You name the time and the place.”
Matt smiled. “Saturday night. We’ll pick y’all up at seven.”
Sam blew out her breath, a crooked smile on her face. She knew she’d been outsmarted.
“Okay, Matt. You win this one, but I warn you, the next one won’t be so easy.”
Matt pulled into the medical center parking lot thinking the trip had been much too short.