At home Georgia started in on some due diligence. Organizations had such vanilla names for spying. “Due diligence” sounded way more respectable than “surveillance” or “intel.” It was professional, nonjudgmental. Even though they were all the same activity.
She disqualified the Mexican couple whose names weren’t on the nameplate, as well as the Chinese couple whose names were. She hoped she wasn’t profiling, but the Mexicans didn’t live there, and the Chinese had just arrived. She didn’t think they would have business with Chad Coe. But she did make a note to try to identify the names of the Mexican couple’s “cousins.” Who knows what they were using the apartment for? It could be worth a return visit.
Then she started in on Claudia Nyquist, who did have a paper trail. Divorced for two years, she’d been upside down on her mortgage in Des Plaines and had to move when the bank took it back. She was currently a data administrator at Evanston Hospital. Had Chad Coe handled her divorce? Helped her with the fallout from the house? Or was she working with him on the baby ring?
The contractor, Bill Tuttle, was as boring on paper as Mrs. McCune made him sound in person. No debts. Only two credit cards. Two bank accounts, one personal, one business. A pickup truck, used. Unmarried. In his forties. Not much else. She decided to skip him for now.
Then she Googled the Northbrook doctor Chad Coe visited before he drove down to Skokie. Dr. Richard Lotwin was from Long Island and had gone to NYU for his undergraduate degree, Chicago Medical School for his MD. He had a wife and two kids. Nothing out of the ordinary. Until eight years ago. He’d been operating on a patient who died at Newfield Hospital while on the table. Lotwin, the anesthesiologist, and the hospital were all sued for malpractice. The case was determined to be a “bad outcome” rather than negligence, and the insurance companies settled it.
But a few years later it happened again, this time to a young boy of twelve who was in for a routine appendectomy. Something went terribly wrong, and the boy, Antonin Tunick, died. Lotwin’s medical license was suspended, and he was fired.
Georgia went to the Illinois Clerk of the Circuit Court’s website, entered the boy’s name, and searched the full docket file. Nothing came up. There was no mention of any lawsuit connected to Antonin Tunick, no settlement, no reprisals.
Odd.
She Googled the boy’s name. His mother came to the US from Russia when the boy was a baby. A single mother, she lived in Northbrook. Georgia couldn’t help but think the woman had bad karma. If she’d stayed in Russia, her son might still be alive. Not because Russian doctors were so great, but at least she wouldn’t have run into Richard Lotwin.
So why didn’t the mother file a malpractice suit? Georgia was surprised an ambulance-chasing lawyer hadn’t contacted her; the story triggered some media attention. Surely a lawyer would have taken the case on contingency, especially with Lotwin’s prior history. But there was nothing.
What’s more, she couldn’t find anything about a relationship between Lotwin and Chad Coe. She rocked back in her chair. Both Lotwin and Coe had been rejected from their respective professions. Did they meet at some twelve-step program? Or one of those “second-life” programs for people who needed a fresh start?
Whatever their relationship, Georgia needed more. But searching for those connections seemed to be taking her farther away from Savannah, not closer. Then again, what had she expected? A map with neon signs that led directly to her? PI work could be slow going and murky. What would she advise a client in her situation? She’d promise to keep digging until she’d exhausted all leads or tied up loose ends.
She leaned forward and rubbed her palm across her forehead. She thought about tracing Chad Coe’s phone records, but she didn’t have his cell. And if he was involved in sex trafficking or black market babies, the calls she’d want to trace would likely have been made from burners. She’d have to find another way forward.