Twenty-seven
After Gregory had been sent downtown, the team returned to Shelly’s office and checked with Sherry, who had found nothing new on the computer to help with their search for the killer’s identity. They were sitting around, looking as discouraged as they felt, when Sam suddenly snapped her fingers. “Matt, if you were a vampire and needed a constant supply of blood, and worked in or had access to a hospital, where would you look?”
He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t know, the lab maybe?”
Sam scowled impatiently. “No, that blood hasn’t been tested, it might be infected with any type of disease. Think . . . who tests every bit of blood they collect for all types of blood-borne diseases before it’s accepted?”
“The blood bank!” Matt answered, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it sooner.
“Absolutely! And do you know who’s in charge of the blood bank at Methodist Hospital?”
“No.” Matt had some vague memory of a redheaded RN who always delivered the blood to the ER, but he had no idea what doctor was serving as medical director of the blood bank.
“Doctor Hunt. The same Dr. David Hunt who went to such lengths to discredit our theory about the nature of the wounds on the first victim.”
Shooter hitched up his pants. “Then, I think it’s about time we paid the good doctor a visit.”
Shelly held up his hand. “Wait, not just yet. First we need to go to the business office and do some thorough checking on the amount of blood that’s come into the bank and the amount that’s gone out.”
“And if there’s a discrepancy, we’ll have the perpetrator cold,” Matt said.
Shooter smirked, saying, “Oh, bad pun.”
They stood, but Sherry remained seated. “Y’all go ahead and check it out. I’ve got another idea and I’d like to run it through the computer.”
* * *
Two hours later, Sherry Landry looked up from Shelly’s computer terminal as they returned from their search of the records.
“Hey, guys, what’s going on?”
Shooter flopped down in a chair. “Nothing, nada, zilch!”
Shelly walked over to the coffeepot and poured a cup. “We just spent several hours on a wild-goose chase.”
“We checked out the blood bank, but every ounce of blood that’s come in the past year is indisputably accounted for,” Matt added.
“Yeah, we’re at a dead end,” Sam mumbled. “I guess we’ll just have to investigate every doctor on staff.”
Sherry smiled and held up her empty cup to Shelly. “Maybe not. I may have found something in the computer after all. I ran a search pattern on the known victims and had the computer print out the names of all the doctors that had ordered any lab tests on them in the past year.” She paused to sip the coffee.
“Well, don’t keep us in suspense, did anything show up?” asked Shooter.
“Well, not anything definite, but one doctor’s name did show up a little more often than any others.”
Sam and Matt asked at the same time, “Who?”
“Doctor James Goddard.”
“Oh,” said Shelly, looking disappointed. “That probably doesn’t mean anything. He’s a gynecologist, and has one of the largest practices in the city.”
“So?” said Shooter.
“It makes sense that he would have ordered a lot of blood tests,” Matt said.
“One other thing, Doctors,” Sherry said. “Nancy Newman, also known as ‘Blaze,’ was one of his patients.”
Shooter stood. “That settles it. It’s worth a shot. Come on, we have to start somewhere, and every minute we waste is another minute TJ’s held captive.”
Shelly shrugged and pushed himself out of his chair. Sam waved at Sherry. “Come on, Sherry. It’s your clue, it’s only right that you help us track it down.”
Matt followed them out of the office, thinking it a waste of time but hoping that Goddard was somehow involved. He remembered his arrogance, and his own almost instinctual dislike of the man. Not very scientific, he thought to himself, but then, nobody’s perfect.
* * *
Dr. James Goddard’s secretary looked down her long nose at them as they stood before her desk. “Do you have an appointment? Doctor’s very busy just now.”
Shelly said, “No, but this is very important, and we’ll only take a couple of minutes.”
“Doctor Goddard?” she said into her intercom. “Doctor Silver is here and requests a few minutes of your time.”
Goddard’s voice came from the speaker, “Is he alone?”
“Why, no. He has two gentlemen and two ladies with him.”
“Give me five minutes, then show them in.”
She pointed at a grouping of chairs in the waiting room. True to his word, they were shown into his office five minutes later.
After Shooter and Sherry had been introduced and they had been seated, Goddard leaned back in his chair, steepled his hands in front of his chest, and asked, “What’s this all about, Shelly?”
As Matt sat there, he examined Goddard’s face closely, looking for anything out of the ordinary, anything that might brand this man as a monster. Other than the fact that his skin was somewhat pale and remarkably unwrinkled for someone of his supposed age, there was nothing.
“We’re here about one of your patients, a Ms. Nancy Newman,” said Shelly.
Matt thought he saw the doctor’s eyes narrow at the mention of the dead girl’s name, but he couldn’t be sure.
“The name is not immediately familiar to me. Has she broken the law in some way?”
Shooter leaned back and crossed his legs. “Not exactly, Doc.” Goddard frowned at the too familiar “Doc,” staring intently at Shooter as he continued. “She was found murdered last week . . . her throat was cut and her body was dumped downtown near a warehouse.”
Matt watched Goddard closely for any reaction as Shelly continued. “James, she shows up as one of your patients on the hospital computer. Maybe you remember her by her professional name, Blaze Star.”
Goddard rubbed his chin while he thought, then snapped his fingers. “Oh yes, she was a prostitute, I believe. Tell me, Detective,” he said, cutting his eyes over at Shooter, “isn’t it an occupational hazard for whores to end up with their throats cut, or to suffer some other such grisly end?”
Sam, angered by the reference to the dead girl as a whore, snapped back, “Just what were you treating Nancy for, Doctor?”
Goddard raised his eyebrows at the scornful tone of her question. “I’m afraid that’s both privileged and confidential information, Doctor.”
Shooter uncrossed his legs and leaned forward in his seat, smiling a smile that had absolutely no humor in it. “I’m afraid you’re wrong, Doc. Medical records lose their confidentiality if a person is dead as a result of a felony assault.”
Goddard looked over at Shelly, who nodded. “I’m afraid he’s right, James. The officers have every right to see her records.”
Goddard scowled, then called his nurse on the intercom and told her to bring in the medical file on Nancy Newman. They sat there in a hostile silence while waiting for the chart. After she delivered it, he flipped through the pages and studied them for a moment.
“Okay, although I’m afraid it’s not going to help you very much. She was referred to me by her family physician because of a chronic mild anemia, due he thought to excessive menses. Her studies were all negative, and I made a diagnosis of anemia due to heavy menstrual periods compounded by a diet low in iron.” He looked over at Sam and said, somewhat contemptuously, “It seems prostitutes don’t eat many vegetables. I put her on double doses of ferrous gluconate and gave her some hormone pills to reduce the frequency and severity of her menstrual periods.” He looked up from the record and leaned back in his chair. “Her blood count at the last visit was within normal limits.”
He closed the record with a flourish and looked challengingly at Shooter, as if daring him to dispute the record.
They started to rise and Sherry said, “Okay, Doctor, thank you very much for your . . .”
Before she could finish her sentence, Shooter uncrossed his legs and accidentally kicked over Goddard’s wastebasket. He leaned forward, apologizing as he started to pick up the papers spilled on the carpet. “Gosh, I’m sorry, Doctor. I’m not usually so clumsy.”
When Matt got to the office door, he turned for a final look at Goddard and noticed that he was sweating. The room was cool rather than warm, and there seemed no reason for him to be nervous. Their questions hadn’t been that threatening. Matt looked closely, eyes squinted, while Shelly said his good-byes and apologized again for disturbing Goddard’s workday.
That’s strange, he’s sweating like mad and even has a slight tremor around his eyes, Matt thought as they filed out of his office. He felt sure the man was hiding something.
Instead of leaving the hospital, Shelly took them to his office. Sherry said, “Well, that was a wasted visit. Other than being a pompous asshole, he seemed to have all the right answers.”
Shooter had a fierce grin on his face. “I’m not so sure, Sherry. What do you make of these?” He pulled his hand out of his coat pocket and dumped a handful of tiny pieces of paper on Shelly’s desk.
Sherry picked one up and studied it closely. “It’s computer read-out paper. See, it’s got the distinctive green and white stripes.”
Matt looked at Shooter and smiled. “Not usually so clumsy, huh? You palmed those from Goddard’s trash, didn’t you?”
“Yep, and smoothly done if I do say so myself.”
They spread the pieces out on the desk and worked over them like a jigsaw puzzle, piecing enough together to see that they contained lab values, but not finding enough to definitely say they were CJD or other special test values or to recognize any patient names.
Sherry leaned back in her chair. “I thought the son of a bitch was sweating too much to be innocent.”
Matt smiled. So she’d noticed it too.
“I’ll bet he’s been tying into the hospital computer and using it to screen his victims,” Sherry continued.
Sam was quiet for a moment. “This means nothing by itself. All of the doctors on staff here use the computer to check out their patients’ lab results.”
“Sam, do all of the doctors tear them up before they throw them away?” Shooter asked.
“I agree, that’s suspicious, but it’s not proof of any wrongdoing.”
Shooter reached for the phone. “Well, as far as I’m concerned, Goddard’s our best lead so far. Sherry, see if you can dig up anything on him with the computers.. . . Check the tax rolls to see if he owns any property or rents any place where he might have stashed TJ.”
She looked up. “And what are you going to do?”
“First I’m going to fill the chief in on what we found, then I’m going to tail the bastard and hope he leads me to TJ.”
Sam reached across the desk to the pile of computer printouts Sherry had brought with her. “I’ll pull all the victims that Goddard ordered tests on and cross-reference the names with the patients’ autopsies to make sure all of their deaths fit our killer’s MO.” She looked up at Sherry. “From the number you have here, that looks like an all-night job.”
Shelly said, “Here, Sam. Give me some of those and I’ll help too.”
Matt walked to Shelly’s bookshelf and took down a large book. Blowing dust off the cover, he glanced at the title and sat down. “Me, I’m going to do some research on CJD and other blood diseases.” He began to thumb through the pages. Feeling more than a little guilty, he decided not to tell the others about his plan to wait until Goddard left and try to bribe or trick the cleaning people into letting him into his office, where he could do some snooping around.