“Anyone want to help me out with a dead floater?” Doug called across the office. “It’s not fresh so only the strong of stomach need apply.”
Ngaire scrunched her face up and turned away. Suddenly, coordinating the statements from the past few days seemed a far more engrossing task than it had ten minutes before.
“I’ve got to finish up this paperwork,” Willis said. “Think you can handle it on your own?” He dropped his voice lower and glanced over his shoulder. “Gascoigne is already on our asses because no one’s taking up his hints. I really need to get this sorted ASAP.”
Over breakfast that morning, Ngaire had stared downcast as her television broadcast the District Commander’s sound bites from the Shannon Rickards’ case. Not that she should think of it that way any longer. Better to call it the Bob Rickards murder spree now and be done with it.
Ngaire felt a dull pulse of unfairness and ingratitude behind her eyelids. The common preliminary signal before a migraine headache splayed her vision with beautiful lights and progressed into an aching thump.
She moved over to get a glass of water from the cooler and swallowed down a couple of Tylenol. When Deb walked by, perhaps avoiding floater duty, Ngaire caught her arm and pulled her closer. “What did Gary mean, no one’s taking up Gascoigne’s hints? Hints about what?”
“Don’t worry,” Deb said. “I think he’s just talking about the exams that everyone has politely declined so far. What did you tell him when he asked you?”
Ngaire coughed to cover her hurt and confusion. Gascoigne hadn’t asked her. When it was just Deb, it was okay. Deb had more experience and was a more natural fit for a leader. Gary Willis, though? The thought that she rated lower than him on Gascoigne’s internal leadership board stung.
As she reached her desk, Redding’s phone started to ring, and Ngaire gratefully thrust her thoughts away to lean over and push the call forward button. The dolt couldn’t even remember to do that simple task when he left his desk, but Gascoigne probably thought he too was fit for promotion.
She pushed back to her own desk and picked up the call through the extension. “DC Ngaire Blakes speaking.”
“This is Dr. Sanderson,” the caller introduced himself. “I’ve been contacted by the District Health Board to say that there was a need to call you and discuss the Westmere Surgery Clinic that I used to run.”
“Sure,” Ngaire said. “The case has been handed over to another unit, so I’ll just transfer your call.”
“Doug Redding, it said to talk to,” the caller continued. “Is he there?”
“I’m afraid he’s out of the station at the moment,” Ngaire said, trying not to wince at the whining note in her voice. “As I said, I’ll transfer you—”
“He stated that he was calling about a patient named Sam Andie. I’ve checked, and I think I know the kid he’s talking about, but he wasn’t a patient of mine.”
Ngaire stopped looking through the inter-departmental directory and frowned down at the phone. “Could the client have booked in under another name?”
“No,” Dr. Sanderson said. “Or, rather, yes he could, but he didn’t.”
“How did you know him, if he wasn’t a patient? Are you sure that we’re talking about the same person?”
“Young kid?” the doctor said. “Maybe late teens or early twenties. African American I’d guess he was called nowadays, though back then we just called him Black.”
“That’s right,” Ngaire said, frowning. “But he wasn’t a patient of yours?”
“No. The lad was a transvestite.” Dr. Sanderson paused to clear his throat. “Do you know the differences between the varieties of sexual identities and genders?”
“I think so,” Ngaire answered. “Transvestite means he liked to dress as a woman but didn’t identify as one, is that right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” The doctor coughed for a few moments, long enough to cover the phone so it came through muffled, though not muted so that Ngaire didn’t hear him at all. “We operated as a surgery, so we mainly dealt with clients who wanted specific cosmetic reassignments, to fit with their internal image of themselves.”
“Can I ask, if he wasn’t a patient, how did you meet Sam Andie?”
“Ah, well. I’m not sure I’m allowed to pass that information on.” The doctor covered the phone with his hand again to cough, then came back on the line. “Although we performed surgery, that wasn’t all we dealt with. We counseled people through early transitioning when they want to try things out. As well as the cross-gendered we also worked with intersex adults, especially those who had been gendered when they were children. Asexual adults, too, we counseled them with relationships.”
Ngaire’s heart beat faster in her chest. Her cheeks felt warm and topped with a satin sheen of sweat. “How do you mean? With the asexual adults?”
“We talked through common misconceptions. That asexual people can’t be sexually active or have long-term relationships that are entirely non-sexual.” He chuckled briefly. “There’s a lot of folks who don’t enjoy having sex with another person but who end up married and having children. When that was a conscious decision and something they wanted to pursue, we worked out ways they could navigate that.”
“But Sam Andie wasn’t involved in your counseling, either?”
“No.” The doctor went into another coughing fit. “Sorry about that. Sam Andie didn’t need our help. The boy might have been young, but he knew exactly what he was and exactly how he wanted to live his life. It’s unusual for many people, but an especial oddity in one so young.”
“If I understand you correctly, though,” Ngaire said, speaking slowly as she felt her way, not wanting the doctor to leave the conversation. “You’re saying that a friend or colleague of Sam Andie was a patient of yours in some way?”
“Yes,” Dr. Sanderson said, sounding more and more uncomfortable. “To answer those questions, though, I’d need a warrant and it would have to be for the person in question.”
“And if we didn’t know who that person was?”
“You’d be shit out of luck.”
The swearing from a man who spoke so eloquently sounded even more potent. After a short pause, the doctor spoke again. “You might be out of luck, anyway. When the clinic closed down, we were still trying everything to keep it going. The service was desperately needed, even the government recognized that.”
“Were you government funded?”
“Oh, goodness no. We were private through and through. That’s where your issue might lie, though,” Dr. Sanderson said. “We left work on a Tuesday night still thinking that we might be able to pull the clinic through a rough patch. The next morning, when we turned up, the front door was bolted, and a trespass notice was plastered over the front.”
“You were forcefully liquidated?” Ngaire guessed.
“Very forcefully. The same landlord who’d agreed to a new payment plan suddenly changed his mind. All of our stuff immediately went to the liquidator who started selling it off in parcels. Files were physical back then”—Ngaire knew that all too well—”and just stored on the premises in boxes. I don’t know where they ended up.”
“Wouldn’t the local DHB have taken them over?”
“This was before the District Health Board system, but yeah, usually that’s where it would go. An old patient of ours tried to pull some information a few years back, though, after the government passed some new law. He got nowhere, nobody could find them.”
Ngaire picked up a pen and started to doodle on her desk pad. “So, you can remember these patients or non-patients as the case may be, but any official records are lost?”
The doctor agreed. “That’s about the size of it. That’s what I was calling to tell you, not that Sam Andie’s file would have been in there, even if it could be found.”
“But Shannon Rickards might be if they were located?”
“Yeah,” the doctor said, before breaking off into another bout of coughing. “Sorry, I meant no, I wouldn’t be able to say. Not without a warrant.”
Ngaire smiled at the phone, though the good doctor wouldn’t be able to see. “Well, as I said, another team has taken over the investigation, but I’ll pass along your information.”
“Great, thanks,” the doctor said. “I’m not really up to long phone conversations anymore.”
After thanking him again and jotting down his contact details, Ngaire typed up a quick report. She forwarded it over to the new team in charge and then finished her doodle off while she thought about what he’d said.
Sam Andie had money in his bank account that, as far as Ngaire knew, they hadn’t managed to trace back to the source. If the money wasn’t even for him, but for Shannon, then would killing him really have been a smart idea? It wasn’t as though she’d been in possession of his bank card. If Shannon had killed him for the money, she’d also left her sole means of sourcing it with the body on the hill.
“Not that it’s your case any longer,” Ngaire whispered. “Leave it alone.”