Grave Matters

'No problem, Fred. But if you go off shift, leave the original in an envelope with the guard who comes on after you. I'll give him a receipt for it.'

The guard nodded.

Behind them a car honked.

'Anything else?' the guard said. 'They're really starting to pile up.'

One car was waiting.

Vega said, 'Thank you, Fred. Appreciate your professionalism.'

Fred liked hearing that.

Warrick pulled ahead. 'Martha Hinton, huh? That's the best friend, right? But she said she didn't visit Vivian, right?'

'Said she hadn't been to see Vivian,' Vega said, 'for a day or so.'

'Could she have been confused?' Warrick asked.

'Possible.' Vega shrugged. 'She was upset, hearing about her friend's death. Could have rattled her a little.'

Catherine said, 'In any case, you'll be talking to the good neighbor again, then.'

'Yes…' Vega's eyes narrowed in thought. '…but we're here. Let's deal with what's in front of us.'

'Agreed,' Warrick said.

Catherine nodded, ponytail swinging.

Within five minutes the detective and the CSIs were again seated in Dr. Larry Whiting's office.

The doctor did not look thrilled to see them, but he remained professional and polite. Again, he wore a lab coat, his tie brown-and-white striped and neatly knotted. Vega and Catherine sat in the chairs opposite Whiting while Warrick opted not to sit on the couch this time and leaned against the door.

The detective wasted no time. 'Our crime lab has conducted an autopsy. The evidence indicates that Vivian Elliot was murdered.'

'That's terrible,' Whiting said, obviously surprised.

Catherine wondered if the doctor considered it 'terrible' for Vivian that she'd been murdered, or for the Sunny Day facility?

Sitting forward, the doctor asked, 'Do we know how it happened yet?'

Catherine noted the doctor's editorial 'we'-as in, a doctor on rounds greeting a patient with, How are we feeling today?

'I'm not at liberty to say at this point, Doctor,' Vega said. 'But the CSIs and I will be looking into the backgrounds and records of all the employees here.'

Whiting sighed, but said, 'I understand.'

Getting out his notebook, Vega asked, 'I'll need the names of Vivian's caregivers.'

'I would have to pull the records to know for sure. When do you need that?'

Catherine said, 'Now would be good.'

Whiting reached for a file on his desktop; he had vaguely implied it would take some doing finding the file, and here it was, at his fingertips-clearly he'd anticipated needing it.

He read, 'Kenisha Jones…Rene Fairmont…and Meredith Scott.' He lay down the file. 'Those were the main ones. Various nurses might enter for assorted small tasks.'

Vega was writing down the names. 'What shifts did these three work?'

'Kenisha works days, Rene is second shift, and Meredith works overnight.'

'What can you tell us about them?'

'Nothing beyond that they're professionals,' Whiting said, gesturing with open palms. 'Frankly, I don't know what kind of information you're looking for. Do I think any of them killed Vivian or any of the others? No. Of course not.'

'Can you be specific about their individual performance?'

'I don't work with Meredith that much, as you might imagine-I'm seldom here overnight. As for the other two, Kenisha is a first-rate nurse; I've worked with her for as long as I've been here. Rene, the second shift nurse, strikes me as a dedicated caregiver as well. Never had a bit of problem with either of them.'

Looking up from his notebook, Vega asked, 'And how long have you been here, Doctor?'

'Two years last April.'

'Any particular reason you're at Sunny Day, and not at a bigger hospital?'

Catherine added, 'Or in private practice?'

Whiting closed the file on his desk and shunted it aside. 'I view medicine as my calling,' he said, choosing his words carefully. 'But, temperamentally, I crave a slower pace than a bigger hospital or a private practice would grant me. I prefer the tempo of Sunny Day or, I should say, I preferred it before the last eight months.'

'How so?'

'You're here, aren't you?…Things have been getting further and further out of hand, and until your assistant coroner noticed certain suspicious trends, I think we were all simply writing these deaths off as a streak of bad luck.'

Catherine asked, 'People dying? Streak of bad luck?'

'I don't mean to sound flippant,' Whiting said. 'I'm anything but.…It's just that this isn't the first assisted care facility I've worked in, and over the years you notice that sometimes deaths seem to come in…yes, streaks.'

'Life and death,' Catherine said, 'just another game in Vegas?'

'I told you I didn't mean it in any kind of flip way. It's just…sometimes you'll go months without a death…then suddenly…' He snapped his fingers, once, twice, three times. '…three people go in a single month. Then we'll go a month with nothing, and get one or two in a row again. You have to understand-over five hundred people reside in the various wings of Sunny Day. Twenty-two seems like a lot of deaths but, truth is, there are extenuating circumstances.'

Catherine arched an eyebrow. 'Such as?'

'Sunny Day doesn't have an overnight physician, understand. There's a four-hour gap in service, with what you might call a skeleton crew on hand. Any crisis after midnight, the nurses call nine-one-one-just as you might at home. Myself, along with Doctors Todd Barclay, Claire Dayton, and John Miller…we're the only doctors on staff full time.'

Warrick asked, 'How are the shifts split up?'

Whiting said, 'We split the two shifts, seven days a week. Claire and I are a team, as are Todd and John. We do three ten-hour shifts, then we're off two days. A few of these patients are visited by their own personal physicians…but not many.'

Vega frowned. 'You work fifty hours a week?'

'Plus overtime,' Whiting said. 'And there's plenty of that to go round, too.'

'Sounds brutal,' Warrick said.

'It is,' Whiting said.

Catherine said, 'What about that slower pace you say you crave?'

A grin blossomed-the first sign of spontaneity from this controlled interview subject. 'Compared to having a private practice, and seeing thirty to forty patients every day, six to seven hundred a week? I prefer to see fifty patients today, the same fifty I saw yesterday, and the same fifty or so I'll see tomorrow. Where a physician in private practice will have a roster of over a thousand patients, mine is fifty and I get to spend considerably more time with each one of them.'

'More personal,' Warrick said.

'Much,' Whiting confirmed. 'The pace is a lot different than private practice. The vast majority of these patients never walk out of Sunny Day, remember. Those of us who work here do our best to provide them care and comfort before they are, frankly, rolled out.'

Flipping his notebook closed, Vega said, 'We'll likely be in touch again, Doctor.'

'Let me know how I can help,' Whiting said.

The trio marched from the administrative wing and back down one of the hallways lined with patient rooms. An attractive African-American woman in white slacks and a floral smock came out of a room, head lowered, studying a chart as she walked right into Warrick, the chart popping out of her hands.