Fatal (6 page)

“Nikki, what’s happening to me? . . . Where has my mind gone? . . . Where has my music gone? . . . Why are they doing this to me?”

Her sobbing became uncontrollable. Nikki held her tightly and felt the fear and confusion in her body. Beneath her hair she could feel more lumps—solid rather than cystic, slightly movable, not tender that she could tell. Lymph nodes? Some weird kind of firm cyst? Neurofibromas? It was impossible to tell. Nikki begged her to come with her to the ER. Finally, Kathy agreed to see Nikki’s doctor the next day. But at the appointment time, she was nowhere to be found. She came back to the apartment once more that Nikki knew of, then vanished again.

“Nikki, how are you doing?”

Dr. Josef Keller had entered the autopsy suite and now stood beside the bloated corpse of Roger Belanger. Nikki had covered the open thorax and abdominal cavities with moist towels. Keller, a German Jew whose family had fled the Holocaust, was a year or two from retirement, but was still vibrant, curious, and energetic. Still, the strain of overseeing a department responsible for the evaluation of more than fifty thousand deaths statewide each year was taking its toll. He limped from arthritis in his hip and had a back condition that made it painful to bend over the cadavers for long.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Nikki said. “This is an interesting case.”

“I thought this man had a coronary,” Keller replied, with still the hint of an accent.

“Well, I think he was murdered.”

“Murdered? Have you been watching reruns of that pathologist show—um, what was his name?”

“Quincy. Nope. I may be wrong, but here, look at this.”

First Nikki showed him the bizarre abrasion beneath Belanger’s chin.

“A ring?” Keller asked, immediately on top of things as usual.

“I think so.”

“With diamond studs forming the initial.”

“Exactly. There’s more.”

Nikki handed over the otoscope—the tool used by physicians to examine the ear canal and drum. More often than not, she had found residents and even board-certified pathologists omitting this part of the postmortem exam.
Process
.

Keller took his time, murmuring to himself as he examined Belanger’s ears by turning the large, violet head from one side to the other and back and inserting the otoscope into the external ear canal.

“Ruptured, with flakes of dried blood,” he said finally. “Both eardrums were ruptured shortly before his death.”

“I haven’t been to see his Jacuzzi,” Nikki said, “but I would bet it isn’t at least five feet deep.”

Five feet—the minimum depth where the pressure on the drums, if not equalized, could cause rupture.

“You are postulating that this man did not drown in his tub?”

“I am. I think he drowned, all right, but I think someone he was swimming with—someone with the initial ‘H’ on his ring in diamond studs—dragged him underwater by the throat—maybe to the bottom of a pool—and then brought him home and put him in the tub.”

“An argument?”

“Perhaps.”

“And the water in his lungs and stomach?”

“I’m waiting for—”

“Home is the hunter, home from the kill. Oh, hi, Joe.”

“It’s home from the
hill
, Brad,” Nikki said. “Did you pick up the package?”

“I did. What do you need chlorine test strips for?”

“I think your ‘tubber,’ as you so quaintly put it, actually drowned in a pool.”

“But then how did . . . murdered?”

“You are exceedingly sharp,” Nikki said. “No wonder they named you Brad.”

She dipped one of the strips into the water from Belanger’s stomach. In seconds the tiny indicator square had turned faint purple.

“I am most impressed,” Keller said. “I shall call our friends at the station house and let them know. This is quite fascinating . . . quite fascinating indeed.”

He limped back to his office.

“Good thing I insisted you do a full autopsy on this guy,” Brad said.

Nikki glared at the man, but honestly couldn’t tell if he was being serious. The overhead speaker kept her from finding out.

“Dr. Solari, are you still in there?”

“Yes, Ruth, I’m here.”

“There’s an outside call for you. I’m going to transfer it.”

Seconds later the wall phone rang. Brad held his ground as she passed, forcing her to squeeze between him and Belanger’s autopsy table.

“Grow up,” she said.

“She digs me,” Brad said.

This time Nikki ignored him.

“Pathology, this is Dr. Solari.”

“Nikki?”

Nikki felt her heart stop.

“Kath, where are you, honey? Are you all right?”

Kathy Wilson’s voice was that of a small child.

“Nikki, I’m so cold. . . . They’re after me and I’m so cold.”

There were traffic noises in the background, now a car horn. She was calling from a pay phone.

“Kathy, stay calm. I’m going to help you. You’re going to be all right.”

“Why are they trying to kill me, Nik? . . . Why am I so cold?”

“Hey, what gives?” Brad Cummings asked.

Nikki snapped a finger against her lips then waved him out of the room.

“Get out,” she mouthed.

“Okay, okay. You know, you’re really very touchy today. You must be having your—”

“Out!” This time she shouted the word. Pouting theatrically, Cummings left. “Kathy, listen, just tell me where you are and I’ll come right over and get you. . . . Kath?”

“You’re just like all the others, Nikki. You want my music to stop. . . . Is that why they’re after me? Because they want my music to stop?”

Her singsong voice was haunting and vague. Nikki imagined her on some street corner, huddled at a pay phone kiosk in the pouring rain. She cast about for some way to alert the police and maybe have this call traced.

“Kathy,” she tried, “look around and tell me what you see.”

“Nikki . . . Nikki . . . Nikki. You sent them, didn’t you. You sent them to silence my music. I’ll get you for this, Nikki. I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I do.”

“I love you, Kathy. You’re my friend. I would never do anything to hurt you. In your heart you know that. Honey, you’re not thinking clearly right now. You’ve got to come home. Let me help you.”

“Help . . . me. . . .”

“Kathy, just tell me what to do.” There was a prolonged silence.

“Kathy?”

Nikki waited for another thirty seconds before slowly setting the receiver in its cradle. Then, making no attempt to deal with the cadaver of Roger Belanger, she burst into tears and raced from the room.

 
CHAPTER
5

IT WAS A GRAY, BLUSTERY DAY—A DAY TOTALLY 
befitting a funeral. Matt was one of just twelve mourners at the graveside service for Darryl Teague. The other eleven were relatives of one sort or another, all of whom lived in the hills north of town. The irony was hardly lost on Matt that in clear view of the dreary, overgrown cemetery were the tall hills that housed the BC&C mine.

But the day held another irony.

It wasn’t until he stepped off his Harley and approached the rectangular pit that he realized this was the first funeral he had been to in nearly four years. The last one was his wife’s. Matt recalled that day with painful clarity—the crowd, the limousines, the flower-bedecked hearse bearing what remained of the woman he had all too happily pledged to love until death did them part. Only death hadn’t ended his love for her. Not at all.

The ill-kept cemetery, bordered by an irregular row of shrubs, was at the center of a broad, rolling, treeless field. Teague’s grave, on the far west side, was marked by a hastily erected, rough-cut chunk of marble with the initials “D.T.” crudely chiseled into it. Nothing more.

Virginia McLaren Rutledge

Beloved Daughter, Sister, and Teacher

Beloved Wife of Matthew Rutledge

MATT STOPPED BY 
his mother’s house three or four times a week, but he visited Ginny’s grave nearly every day, often leaving a leaf or sprig of her hawthorn tree, sometimes a flower. Sometimes he would stay only a few minutes, but others he would sit for an hour or more by her stone, reading or just staring off across the valley. Each visit seemed to strengthen the bond he felt with the only woman, save his mother, he had ever truly loved. Of his friends and family, only Mae Borden knew how often he went to the Saints and Angels Cemetery.

“Matthew,” she had said several times in one way or another, “we all miss her and love her, but we love you, too. It is time for you to pick up the pieces and move on. You have room in your heart for Ginny
and
for someone new. I know she wouldn’t have wanted you to spend your life this way.”

Matt would respond with a shrug or a grunted acknowledgment, and head off. There was no sense in discussing something that simply wasn’t going to happen.

The gaunt preacher performing the ceremony for Darryl Teague had little to say. To his credit, he made no attempt to lie. He called Darryl a carefree, playful child who had grown away from God and had become an angry and troubled young man at the time of his death. He read some bible passages, and issued appropriate words of consolation to Darryl’s parents and sister.

“God works in mysterious ways,” he said as four men grasped heavy ropes and prepared to lower the plain pine box into the gaping maw in the earth. “God works in mysterious ways.”

There were rumblings around the hospital that Matt was the last person known to have been in Teague’s room before his heart stopped irretrievably. But no one could come up with a sensible explanation for why he might have saved the man’s life one day and taken it just a few days later, so natural causes became the consensus around town.

Hal Sawyer’s autopsy contributed little to solving the mystery. As Matt suspected, Teague’s cracked sternum was the cause of the torn vessel that had resulted in his near-fatal tamponade. Beneath that fracture, the heart muscle was bruised. It was certainly the sort of injury that could have caused electrical instability and irregular rhythms in his heart. Hal signed the man out as a fatal arrhythmia secondary to a cardiac contusion secondary to accidental blunt chest trauma. The lumps over Teague’s face and head were nothing more than neurofibromas. The brain itself was grossly normal, leaving Hal with no immediate explanation for Teague’s coma. Full toxicology studies would not be available for another week or two, but a preliminary screen had shown none of the depressants Matt had wondered about.

A sharp gust of wind whipped across the field, swirling dust around the small assembly of mourners, who were singing a hymn Matt vaguely remembered from his youth. He found his thoughts drifting to his father. BC&C had been found blameless in the cave-in that killed Matthew Rutledge, Sr., but Matt, only fifteen then, had heard rumors of safety funds diverted, corners cut, and even men paid off.

“We will close our service with the twenty-third psalm. Pallbearers may lower the casket as we recite, ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. . . .’ ”

No one except Matt had even suggested that Ginny’s bizarre cancer was tied to the mine.

“You yourself said that there are several hundred of these types of lung cancers around the country every year,” BC&C president Armand Stevenson had said to him. “And with each of those cases, I am sure there’s a factory close by, or a lab of some sort, or even a mine. I know you’re frustrated, Dr. Rutledge. Your wife has just died. I know you’re angry and want to blame us. Well, BC and C is not to blame. I repeat, the company is not to blame for your wife’s death any more than it was to blame for your father’s.”

“‘. . . He restoreth my soul. . . .’ ”

Matt watched as the casket was slowly lowered down onto the floor of the grave.

Someone from the mine killed you, Darryl, didn’t they? . . . Why? . . . What did you know? . . . Had you stayed alive, what could your body have told the world about them?

“‘. . . Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .’ ”

Matt forced his careening thoughts aside and joined the others in the final lines of the psalm. When the service was over, he accepted heartfelt thanks from Teague’s family for having tried to save his life, then took a long, slow walk out toward the hills and back. Ginny would have wanted him to keep pushing for answers. Now she was joined by Darryl Teague and Teddy Rideout. Their conditions were different, but maybe the toxins responsible were different, too.

Well, don’t worry,
Gin
, he thought.
Sooner or later, one way or another, we’re going to nail them.

The one way or another clearly did not include the offering of a $2,500 reward. Matt had printed three hundred of the magenta fliers. Mae had posted half of them around Belinda, and he had tacked up the other half in the adjacent towns. Within twenty-four hours, nearly all of them were gone. There had not been one response. So much for the Healthy Mines Coalition.
Another battle lost,
Matt thought,
but not the war. Not the goddamn war.
He swung the Harley around and headed back to his office. Patients were waiting.

As it turned out, there was a message waiting for him as well—a message from Armand Stevenson requesting that Matt come to the mine offices to meet with him and some of those in the company responsible for health and safety. Mae was smiling as she passed the note over.

“Yes!” Matt exclaimed, pumping his fist.

“I thought you might be interested in going, so I cleared you for tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “You’re due out there at one.”

“It seems a bit presumptuous of you to assume I was interested in going,” he said.

“I know, I know,” Mae replied.

Matt kissed her on the cheek and settled in his office to await his first patient of the day. Not a minute later, his uncle called.

“Hey, Hal, we are officially off dead center. I’m going out to the mine tomorrow to meet with Stevenson.”

“I know. That’s why I’m calling.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just ran into your friend Robert Crook. He told me Stevenson had invited you out there. Crook’s going to be there, too, as the head of the physician advisory committee for health and safety.”

“Any idea what they want?”

“None, but I’m calling to urge you to keep your cool no matter what.”

“You mean you think I shouldn’t tell them up front that they killed my father and are probably responsible for my wife’s death as well, and now they’re poisoning miners?”

“Something like that. Matt, you’ve got a reputation with those people as a hothead. Try not to give them any reason to fire back at you.”

“Not to worry. I’m going to be just like Mr. Rogers. ‘Oh, it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine?’ . . . See, I’m practicing up.”

“Seriously, Matt, those people hold all the cards in this community. I should think by now you would have figured that out. I just want you to go easy—have them view you as a responsible man.”

“I’ll do my best, Hal. I promise. Listen, thanks for calling. Give Heidi a hug for me. And don’t worry. Responsible is my middle name.”

AT TWELVE-THIRTY THE 
following afternoon, Matt placed his two overstuffed BC&C files into a gym bag, strapped it onto the Harley, and headed west out of town. Hal only wanted what was best for him, but he was a worrier. This meeting was, perhaps, the first real break he had gotten. He wasn’t about to screw things up.

Next to medicine and motorcycles, the thing Matt knew most about in the world was coal. He had learned about it at the knee of his father, and later on the Internet and in the library. He knew that the Belinda Coal and Coke Company, and indeed the town itself, owed its existence to a huge deposit of semibituminous coal, first discovered in 1901 deep within the tall hills west of the town. Semibituminous coal, also called smokeless coal, was found at only three sites in the state. Smokeless coal was relatively free of impurities, making it the choice for generating steam and also for producing coke. The founders of BC&C had the foresight to construct coking and chemical plants near the mine, as well as a rail spur to speed their products wherever they needed to go.

The entire BC&C operation was located on a vast, dusty plateau, and was completely surrounded by several miles of nine-foot-tall chain-link fence, much of it topped with barbed wire. Matt had been to the mine just once since his father’s death, on a guided tour he and Ginny took shortly after he started work in the ER.

Today, he was an anticipated guest. The uniformed guard at the visitors’ gate greeted him by name before he could introduce himself and directed him to the sparkling two-story cedar and glass headquarters. Blaine LeBlanc’s assistant, Carmella Cassetta, was waiting for him in the carpeted reception area. A former coal-face miner herself, she was attractive in a hard-featured way, and had married one of the execs in the company. Over the years, Matt and she had met on a few occasions and had gotten along reasonably well.

“Matt, it’s so good to see you,” she said warmly, extending her hand.

He tried unsuccessfully to read something into her being the one chosen to greet him. He gestured at the spectacular six-foot-square photos of BC&C scenes—historic and modern—that adorned the lobby walls.

“Thanks. This is quite the building.”

“It makes a good first impression. We do a lot of business here—national and international. Well, we should hurry on over to the conference room. They’re waiting for you. I think you’ll be very excited with what they have to say.”

You mean they’re going to let me live?

“I’m looking forward to whatever it is.”

As they neared the door to the conference room, an elderly black woman approached from the other direction pushing a linen-covered cart with coffee and Danish.

“They’ll only be four, Agnes,” Carmella said. “I won’t be joining them.”

Matt thought he detected a pout in her voice at the prospect. Agnes drew back a few steps as Carmella knocked once, motioned Matt and Agnes in, and left. Three men were waiting at the far end of a glossy mahogany table that had seating for twenty or so—Blaine LeBlanc, Robert Crook, and Armand Stevenson, the CEO of the entire company. Stevenson was five-seven if that, with thinning sandy hair and very quick, engaging blue eyes that remained fixed on Matt from the moment he stepped into the room. BC&C was one of the largest privately owned companies in the state, and Stevenson was something of a legend for the aggressive tactics he used to keep every component of the empire profitable.

After peering curiously at the gym bag, LeBlanc greeted Matt with a single pulse of a handshake, then released him as if trying to avoid a communicable disease. His tense expression had Matt wondering if whatever was about to transpire was not of his choosing. Crook avoided a handshake altogether, substituting instead a curt nod, a grunt that might have been Matt’s name, and a momentary clash of his caterpillar brows. Armand Stevenson, on the other hand, was smiling, cordial, and very much in charge of the proceedings.

“Please sit down, Matthew, if I may call you that,” he said after his offer of something stronger than coffee was declined.

“Matt’ll do.”

“And Armand for me. We appreciate your being able to come out at such short notice, Matt. I understand your father worked here?”

“He was a shift foreman.”

“And he died in an accident?”

“An explosion, yes.”

“Is that where your hard feelings toward the mine and our company stem from?”