David turned the body over and recoiled at the sight of a pearl dagger handle protruding at an upward angle from the man's left chest.
He felt for a carotid pulse; there was none. He pulled away the victim's limp arm which had fallen over his face.
'What … the … hell. It's … Raphael Cortez! Then who …?' Suddenly, David wasn't sure he wanted to graduate to this level of criminal investigation.
'Code 3 in OR, Code 3 in OR,' the public address system blared. David felt his shirt clinging to his shoulders.
He examined the man's hands. No defensive cuts. He saw no blood around the dagger, yet noted a small pool on the floor below the body and a few spatterings on the bench. David recalled no injury on Cortez's backside but above the belt buckle, he spotted a linear entry wound. He lifted the shirt and found no surrounding discoloration suggesting to him that the dagger's hilt had not been pushed against the skin. Stabbed just enough to paralyze before the final plunge, he thought.
He leaned over to inspect the dagger. Third left interspace, precisely over the heart.
'Who's this? Are you okay?' Castleman shouted from behind.
David stiffened to full height. 'Good Christ, man, how about some warning?'
'Oh, sorry. Who is this?'
A forehead taller than his colleague, David tapped downward on his chin. 'Sorry myself. This here, I'm afraid, is Cortez. The guy upstairs was an imposter. Any sign of him?'
'None. How could that happen?' Castleman squeezed each word to a higher pitch.
David preferred his own question: 'What about Bugles? Never came around, I assume.'
'Never. He exsanguinated. What the hell's going on, anyway? If Dr. Imposter wanted to kill Bugles, why go to that extreme? Why not a bullet in the parking lot? And then later, using a dagger? Or a stiletto, or what-ever-the- hell that is.'
'Same thing, although this is a big jobbie.' Castleman bent forward and circled his head around the dagger.
'And don't say, `then later,' David said.
'How's that?'
'Then later implies after, and this was no after. This was before.' He nodded toward the body. 'He was the first to go.'
'It sounds like you're about to get involved in this one, my friend.'
'That I am,' David said, distantly.
'Well, now you can stop complaining about your fill of simple runaways and missing persons.'
David made a quick notation in a notepad. 'Bill,' he said, 'why don't you notify Administration. And better include Security. I'm sure they know about the botched surgery, but tell them about Cortez. I'm calling Kathy.'
Castleman walked to a wall phone as David rushed down to a small corner office. He sat at a desk and scribbled a few more notes in the pad before placing a call to Kathy Dupre, his past high school sweetheart, present contact at the Hollings Police Department and future Mrs. Brooks. He heard the phone ring only once.
'Homicide. Detective Dupre here.'
'It's me. You won't believe this. You're sitting down, right?'
'David, between some of your weird neighborhood visits and some of my weird homicide business, I've heard it all. Remember the book we're going to write
'Just a couple murders.'
David could hear Kathy thinking. Finally, she asked, 'Where are you?'
'Here, in the hospital.'
'Murders-in the hospital?'
'You got it. One's a stabbing. The other-poor guy got his belly hacked up. Bled out.'
'His belly?'
'Right in front of us. In the pit.'
'David, what are you talking about?'
'The board chairman, Charlie Bugles, was having pancreatic surgery. Remember the Dr. Cortez I told you about-the guy I met in the Navy? Well, he's right around the corner from me. Dead. Fancy dagger stiff in his heart. The surgeon was an imposter. He did his dirty deed, under lights and all-in the amphitheater-then took off. We all saw it. You or somebody better get over here.'
David hung up the phone, hoping Kathy would be assigned to the case, not that he had ever been disregarded by others in the Department. In fact, he enjoyed a unique relationship with them. They called on him when time was at a premium and stressed the advantages of his amateur status, like conducting searches without warrants, or entrapping without legal worries. In return, they documented his cases for future licensure. It had all started during his Navy days. Naval Investigative Service. What better choice for undercover operations than a medical officer, he had been told. After discharge, he pursued medicine and part-time sleuthing, and no one doubted his commitment to both.
At Cortez's locker, he found Castleman staring at the body.
'Security's on their way.'
'So are the police,' David said. 'I'd better do my preliminary snooping.'
'It sounds like an official ritual.'
'Not official at all.' He cocked his head. 'Come to think of it, if I ever get licensed, there go my snoops.'
'Look, David, I'm probably in the way here so I'll head back to the ER. Hope I can concentrate. Call me if you need me. Good luck … and, jeez, what a hospital.'
'Thanks Bill, and don't be surprised if some administrative types show up there in shock.'
Once alone, David winced when he crouched down on his bad knee to examine the dagger site at close range. He shifted knees. Tendonitis had been kicking up, the price of vigor against younger competitors in percussive karate. Why keep going back to Bruno's? He visualized the matted studio. It even hurts to climb the damn stairs there.
Teacher lines broadened at his temples as he studied the weapon's entry angle and its handle. Why was it pearly? Too pretty for commandos. It had to be ceremonial, then. He lined up its length against the width of his four-inch palm. It was exactly the same. He mouthed a calculation. Handles are usually forty per cent, meaning the blade in there is six inches. This here's a ten-inch dagger. Some big sucker!
David put the back of his hand to the side of Cortez's face. It was warm. The body appeared waxy-blue and its lips and nailbeds were pale. He pressed on the skin and it blanched. He verified Cortez had been killed within the hour.
Stabilizing his flexed knee with his forearm, he lifted himself up and stepped back, inspecting the pool of blood beneath the bench. A tiny interruption in the pool's border registered in a double take, and he cast his gaze over the floor toward the exit at the end of the aisle. He side-stepped to his right, peering down at a string of large, irregular blood stains: one … two … maybe three.
David walked out the door and into a stairwell. He inspected each step as he descended and found no other traces of blood until he saw two spots on a landing and a single, lighter one halfway down the remaining flight.
On the first floor landing, the left door opened into a passageway leading to the pathology labs while off to the right was an exit to an exterior alleyway. The route from the lab up to Surgery was the one routinely taken by pathologists for frozen section examinations during surgical procedures. How many times had he traveled that way?
David peeked into the lab and, scanning its central corridor, detected no blood trail from that vantage point. He paused, then decided to call on his old mentor, Dr. Ted Tanarlde, the hospital's Chief Pathologist. Head down, he strolled past the Emergency Medical System's unused dispatch window and, finding no further stains to that point, hurried past the Autopsy Room and into the sprawl of interconnecting laboratories: Cytology, Hematology, Bacteriology, Chemistry. He fixed a smile on his face and sensed his technician friends had questions on theirs.
Rounding the far turn, he arrived at Tanarkle's secretary's desk which was tucked in a corner and surrounded by cases of yellow pathology journals under glass. She had just put down the phone.
'Dr. Brooks. I haven't seen you for weeks,' Marsha Gittings said, patting both sides of her hair, straw-colored
