Murder Suicide (9 page)

Authors: Keith Ablow

Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #General, #Psychological

"I was dropping off the records you asked for. Snow’s inpatient psychiatry admission."

"Thank you."

"I wanted you to have the ASAP," Heller said. "You forgot to leave me your address today. I got this one from the Mass Medical Society. Billy said you’d be right back." He held out the envelope.

Clevenger took it. "I appreciate it."

"Looks like you keep the same kind of hours I do. I just finished a six-hour run in the O.R."

"You schedule people this late?"

"No. This guy came in to see his neurologist with the worst headache of his life. The rushed him down to rays, like they should, grabbed an angio. Big-ass aneurysm sitting right on the superior cerebellar artery. No time to waste."

"How did he do?"

"When I opened, the thing was already leaking. If he’d waited one more hour to come in, he would have been history. I clipped it nice and tight and closed. Should be good for another hundred thousand miles." He winked, glanced up toward the ceiling. "God willing."

"Good for you."

"The day ended a lot better than it started, I’ll tell you that," he said. Saying so seemed to bring him back to the morning. He suddenly looked as tired as a man should after losing one patient and barely saving another. "I should get going," he said.

"It’s early," Billy blurted out, then looked down self-consciously, as if he’d dropped his veneer of cool somewhere near his feet.

Clevenger wasn’t sure he’d ever heard him this excited to talk to an adult.

"I’m out of steam," Heller said to Billy. "Another time, though. Without fail." He winked at Clevenger. "Billy and I figured out we have a few things in common."

Billy looked up again, beaming.

"That’s great," Clevenger said. "Like what?"

"My road to the healing arts had a few twists and turns in it, including being put up for adoption."

"Not only that," Billy said.

Clevenger looked at Heller in a way that invited him to fill in the blanks.

"My biological parents left me at the hospital after my mother delivered. Walked out late that night and left the state. A couple from Brookline ended up taking me in. He was a doctor — at Mass General. She was a nurse. They couldn’t have kids themselves." He glanced at Billy, then looked back at Clevenger. "I got to tell you, I put them through hell for years. Skipping school, stealing cars. I got nailed on an assault charge when I was eleven that bought me eight months in DYS lockup."

"Just like me," Billy said.

Billy had spent three months in Department of Youth Services custody about a year before, after he and a friend got into a beef with three other teenagers from nearby Saugus. The Saugus boys had all ended up in the E.R.

"What made the difference?" Clevenger asked.

"My religion," Heller said. "The nervous system." He let his words hang in the air a few seconds. "I started to work with my dad — my adoptive father. He was a neurologist. He’d let me come by the hospital after school, hang out at his office, answer the phone now and then, occasionally sit with him while he examined patients — the really interesting ones."

"How cool is that?" Billy asked.

Clevenger figured Billy was thinking it was a whole lot cooler than he had been about sharing his forensic work. "And you ended up a neurosurgeon," he said to Heller. "You liked what you saw."

"I was fascinated by it. I was fascinated by him. In a real way, his giving me access to his professional life saved me. Until I saw what he could do for people, the power he had to help them, I didn’t know we had that power inside us. The power for good."

"He said I can watch him in the O.R.," Billy glowed. "I can
scrub in
." He said the last words as though he had been admitted to a secret society with its own language. In a way, neurosurgery was that.

"I didn’t exactly take that liberty," Heller said. "I told him I would check with you whether it might be alright."

Billy looked up at Clevenger expectantly.

"Of course he can," Clevenger said. He felt a pang of jealousy, but knew it was irrational. After all, he was the one who had been wary of sharing his work. Billy would have been all over it.

"I’ll call you with a couple of dates when I know we’ve got interesting cases," Heller said to Clevenger.

"Sounds good," Clevenger said.

"Next week, maybe, if we don’t monkey with the schedule. I’ve got someone coming in who’s been blind since eleven years. She’s thirty-three. Benign growth on the occipital nerve. If things go according to plan, and if I get a little lucky, she’s gonna wake up, open her eyes and see."

"Jesus," Billy said.

"Jesus scrubs in on every case," Heller said to Billy. He turned back to Clevenger, nodded at the envelope in his hand. "Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you."

"Actually, if you’ve got a couple minutes," Clevenger said, "I wanted to bring you up to speed on a couple things on the Snow case. I can walk you out." He saw Billy’s face fall. He hadn’t meant to exclude him. And he certainly didn’t want to look like he was competing for Heller’s time. But he also didn’t want to talk about Grace Baxter’s murder in front of him. He tried to recover. "I’m sure you’re as tired as I am, though," he said to Heller. "Why don’t we talk first thing tomorrow?"

Billy got up from his seat. "You don’t have to work around me," he said. "I got to lift, anyhow." He started toward his room.

"See you at the General," Heller said.

"That," Billy said.

Clevenger watched him disappear into his room.

"Is there a new development in the case?" Heller asked Clevenger.

"There is," Clevenger said. "Grace Baxter was found dead tonight."

"Grace Baxter..." Heller said, trying to place the name.

"Her husband George Reese is President of the Beacon Street Bank."

"Snow’s Grace."

Clevenger nodded. "I just left Reese’s house on Beacon Street."

"How did she die?"

"Her wrists were slashed, and her throat was cut."

"She killed herself." He squinted at Clevenger. His lip curled slightly. "You think she killed Snow? What is this, some sort of petty murder-suicide, love triangle bullshit? That’s what I lost my patient to?"

"I don’t know," Clevenger said, struck again by how Heller viewed everything through the prism of self-interest. Snow having lost his life didn’t seem nearly as important to him as the fact that he had lost his star patient. "I didn’t bring this up when you mentioned her earlier today in your office," Clevenger said, "but Baxter was a patient of mine. A new patient. I saw her once."

"You treated her?"

"She came for her first psychotherapy session this morning."

"That’s strange."

"She probably booked the appointment because she was depressed Snow had left her."

"Did she talk about the affair?"

"No."

"She had threatened suicide over it," Heller said. "I think I mentioned that today."

"I wish I had known her psychiatric history," Clevenger said, his words barely sailing through the stiff resistance of his guilt. "I should have asked her more about it."

"You blame yourself for her death," Heller said. He looked directly into Clevenger’s eyes.

What was it about Jet Heller that made for instant camaraderie, instant trust? Was it his own willingness to open up? Was that he lacked rigid boundaries — dropping in for a late night visit, inviting Billy to the O.R.? Or maybe it was simply how comfortable he seemed with everything up to and including death. Would anything rattle a man who opened up other men’s heads every day for a living? "There were questions I didn’t ask," Clevenger said. He didn’t mention the fact that he wasn’t sure Baxter had killed herself in the first place.

"C’mon, Frank, Doc-to-doc. You think you killed her."

Clevenger cleared his throat. "She contracted for safety."

Heller nodded. "I’ve lost twenty-seven patients on the table," he said. "You want to know how many of them I screwed up on?"

"Listen, you don’t have to..."

"Six. Possibly seven. They’re dead because of my limitations as a healer."

Clevenger found himself fighting to listen to Heller more as his psychiatrist than his patient. "And what do you think about that?" he asked.

"I think I have one tough motherfucker of a job, which I happen to love, and I think I’m human, no matter what the newspapers say about me. If I can’t stomach my failings, I have no business going inside anybody’s head."

Clevenger swallowed hard.

"How about you, Frank? Are you human? Or are you starting to believe your own press — that you can heal anyone, solve anything?" He reached out and squeezed Clevenger’s arm.

When you grow up with a father who shows you no love, a man reaching out to you can make you freeze up or make you melt. Clevenger looked away as his eyes filled up.

"Right answer, brother," Heller said. "I’ve gone home the way you’re feeling right now half a dozen times, and I’ll go home that way a dozen more before I’m too old to hold a knife steady."

Clevenger took a deep breath, looked back at him. "Thanks," he said.

"Keep me up-to-date on this thing, if it doesn’t violate any rules," Heller asked. "And if you end up thinking someone did this to Snow other than himself and need more dough to chase that fucker down, just ask. If somebody stole his life from him, they robbed me, too."

"I’ll let you know anything important," Clevenger said. He had to remind himself he really didn’t know Heller very well. "Anything that isn’t classified. You understand."

"We all have our codes," Heller said. "I’ll never ask you to violate yours." He nodded toward Billy’s room. "Your boy’s gonna be fine, by the way. He’s got a really good heart." He shrugged. "You never know, he could be a neurosurgeon underneath all that hair and those piercings."

"You never know."

"Good night."

Heller turned and walked out.

Clevenger walked to Billy’s room. His door was closed. No light seeped from under it. Either he was sleeping or pretending to be. Clevenger stood there a few seconds, wanting to go in and wake him up, to try to do better at sharing Billy’s excitement about Heller and the O.R. But he knew he’d get the usual, "Later, okay? I’m beat."

He walked to his desk facing the wall of windows that looked out onto the Tobin Bridge, sat down and opened the envelope Jet Heller had given him. He flipped to the Admission History and Physical, written by a Dr. Jan Urkevic, and read the section labeled "History of Present Illness."

Dr. Jonathan Snow, a 54-year-old, married, father of two, with epilepsy, is admitted for a competency evaluation prior to undergoing neurosurgery that carries very serious potential risks, including blindness and speech loss. He is a voluntary patient who states he is complying with the wishes of family members — especially his wife — in seeking this evaluation. “She needs to know I’m thinking rationally, that in deciding whether to move forward with the surgery, I’ve weighed its benefits and risks — even if she disagrees with my position.”

Dr. Snow describes the planned procedure as ‘experimental.’ Discreet parts of his brain will be excised by Dr. J.T. Heller in an effort to remove the seizure foci responsible for Dr. Snow’s epilepsy, a condition he describes as a “life sentence, with the prison inside me.” He states, “My brain is broken. It short-circuits when my mind generates my best thoughts. My neural pathways can’t handle the electrical current driven by my imagination.”

In stating this, Dr. Snow understands he is using a metaphor to describe his condition. He is fully aware that removing the seizure foci in his brain — even if this procedure cures him of epilepsy — may or may not result in increased intellectual function. He is willing to accept the risks of surgery (which he lists accurately) whether or not he experiences any gain in that realm.

Dr. Snow holds a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering and works as an inventor at a company he co-founded (Snow-Coroway Engineering). There is no indication that he has become unable to perform tasks requiring memory, concentration or rational decision-making.

Clevenger scanned down to the section labeled ‘Past Psychiatric History,’ noted that Snow denied suffering any psychiatric illness in the past, or having seen a psychiatrist. Under ‘Mental Status Examination,’ Urkevic had recorded his denying any suicidal or homicidal thoughts or any hallucinations. In his conclusions, he found Snow competent, pending psychological testing.

Clevenger fanned pages until he found a ‘Psychological Testing Report’ by Dr. Kenneth Sklar. It was the part of Snow’s medical record that would offer the best window on his intellect and inner emotional life, including any conscious or unconscious wish he might have had to die. The assessment included a battery of tests, including intelligence testing, personality profiling, and ink blots.

He started reading: