Obsessed (21 page)

I rolled down the window. “Sorry. Yes, of course I'd like to see those. Okay if I take them?”

Emily gave a grateful nod and passed me the envelope.

A
NNIE AND
I had the obituaries and death notices spread out on her kitchen table. She'd pushed away a pair of mismatched oak pressed-back chairs. An empty pizza box was on the counter.

In about twenty more years, Annie's kitchen would be considered vintage. There were Sears metal cabinets on the wall and the gas stove was avocado-green. The only modern anything was a microwave.

Annie had sorted the clippings in chronological order. Columbo leaped up, settled himself on the pile in front of Annie, and began to purr. He gave a complaining squeal when Annie scooped him up and dropped him unceremoniously on the floor. Undeterred, he rubbed up against her leg. She scratched him between the ears.

“Let's suppose for a moment that Dr. Philbrick was collecting obituaries and death notices for all the patients of the lab who died. Does this seem like a lot?” Annie asked.

“Over three years? Not really. The lab treats a lot of sick elderly patients. And I think it's fair to assume that most of these had Lewy body dementia.”

“If that's what killed them.”

“‘Died after a lengthy illness,'” I said, pointing to one of the early ones.

“‘Died of a blood infection at Brookline Hospital,'” Annie read, indicating one that was a few months old. “Or how about this one? ‘Died suddenly at his home.'”

“‘Loved ballroom dancing,'” I said, reading from another. “Doesn't give a cause of death, or even where.”

A lot of them were like that.

“Just because it isn't listed as the cause of death doesn't mean dementia isn't what killed them,” I said. “There's a stigma. People feel reluctant to admit that their husband or mother had dementia. They'd rather put ‘heart failure,' which is what kills most of us in the end anyway.”

Annie folded her arms across her chest. “I don't see a whole lot of heart failures.” I could feel her digging in her heels.

“Annie, I know you want there to be something sinister going on here, but are you sure you're being objective?”

She looked me in the eye. “You think I'm burned because Uncle Jack returned from the MRI lab and came down with an infection which Gloria says he couldn't have picked up at the Pearce. And I admit, maybe I am looking for someone to blame for the fact that Uncle Jack almost died. And yes, it's true that I'm more than a little miffed because five minutes after he's supposed to be dead they send around a team of ghouls to collect his brains.

“Call me paranoid if you like, but I'm just wondering if Mr. Martin Drogan”—she put her finger on one of the obituaries, a longtime clerk at the Middlesex courthouse who, according to the article, played hockey in his youth and continued to skate well into his seventies—“died of a bacterial infection.” The obituary gave pneumonia as the cause of death. “What harm would it do if I checked into some of these?”

“We don't even know if these guys were all patients at the imaging lab,” I said.

“We'll find out,” Annie said, giving me an exasperated look. “Surely that's something Emily Ryan can find out for us.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, sighing. “Got any paper?”

Annie opened a drawer and pulled out a pad of yellow lined paper.

“If we're going to do this, at least let's be methodical about it.” I ruled off some columns and put a heading at the top of the first three:
name; date of death; cause
.

Annie read me the names, one by one, and whatever other information was provided. A half hour later we stood back. There were six obituaries from three years ago. Ten in the last year. A dozen already this year and the year was only half up.

“Plus the two that your Uncle Jack snitched,” I pointed out. Made a grand total of thirty.

“Pneumonia. Blood infection. After a
short
illness. Pneumonia again.” Her finger hopscotched down the page.

I had to agree, it was decidedly odd.

“Though you'd think if all these deaths were suspicious, someone would have blown the whistle on them long ago,” I pointed out. “When a healthy patient goes in for a medical test and then drops dead, you can be sure the authorities are going to hear about it. Lawsuits, complaints to the regulators.”

“Maybe,” Annie admitted. “But what happens when that patient is mentally unbalanced, draining away family energy and resources? When that person isn't that person anymore, sudden death can be the answer to a prayer.” Annie's eyes pooled with angry tears. “They don't sue. They say, ‘Such a shame. Oh well, it was for the best.'”

I couldn't argue with her logic.

“So when did each of these people have their last appointment at the MRI lab?” I said, writing a heading over the next empty column:
last appointment at UMI
. “Emily can find that out for us, too.”

“And I'll look up death certificates for these people and get the missing causes of death,” Annie said.

Over the next-to-last column I wrote:
death certificate?

“I'll verify the causes given. Then we'll see what we have.” She sat back. “Wish I could talk to them, ask them…” She looked up at me. “I'm going to find some of these families. See if I can figure out exactly what caused these deaths.”

She took the pencil from me and wrote a heading over the last column:
family?

From her look, I knew it was useless to try talking her out of it.

“You need to be discreet,” I said. “We don't want to end up getting sued by the lab for defamation.”

“I'm always discreet,” Annie said, batting her eyes at me and giving me the biggest, wettest, most obscene kiss ever. “God, it feels great to be doing something instead of sitting around on my butt cursing the fates. I feel like dessert.” She opened the freezer. “Let's see, what have we here? How about some Toscanini's?”

I came up behind her and put my arms around her. “Are you sure it's ice cream that you want for dessert?” I kissed her neck and inhaled her sweet fruity scent.

She'd reached in and pulled out a quart of vanilla. “Mmm. My favorite. And I wonder—” Annie opened the refrigerator. There in the door was a cardboard container of fudge sauce. “Ah. Just the thing.”

She put the fudge sauce in the microwave and set the timer. I went back to nibbling on her neck. The microwave dinged. Annie got out a spoon and stirred the hot fudge and offered me the spoon. I took a lick. Warm, intense. Perfect.

Annie had the ice cream container open. She gouged out some ice cream. “Hard as a rock,” she said.

The ice cream wasn't the only thing that was hard.

Annie put the spoon in her mouth and drew it out slowly, leaving some of the ice cream in the spoon. Then she fed me what was left. “You're in charge of the hot fudge,” she said.

We took turns feeding and being fed spoonfuls of ice cream and spoonfuls of hot fudge sauce.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You've got some fudge over here.” I licked a little bit from the corner of her mouth. “And here.” I put down the fudge and gave her a long, lingering kiss. Annie slid her hands inside my shirt and ran her fingers up and down my back.

“You think there might be some more fudge sauce down there?” Annie asked as I unbuttoned her shirt.

“You never can tell. Gotta check to be sure.”

Late the next afternoon, I was waiting in my office for Emily to show up for our regular conference. I was glad I hadn't acted on suspicion and suspended her from working with patients. After Annie and I had finished analyzing the obituaries and death notices, I'd found myself agreeing with Annie that maybe Leonard Philbrick's death wasn't an accident, and maybe it had nothing to do with Emily being stalked. At the very least I was feeling a reasonable doubt.

What I kept wondering was, Why had Leonard Philbrick saved all those obituaries and death notices? My first thought had been that he'd cared, and in some small way wanted to memorialize them. But I had to consider the possibility that Philbrick himself was the one responsible. Maybe collecting obituaries of those who'd died was the equivalent of carving notches in his belt. And it would explain why he kept them hidden. Following that line of reasoning, maybe someone had taken revenge for the untimely death of a loved one. Thirty potential victims, thirty sets of friends and family. It was possible that someone among them had the know-how to set up the MRI accident.

When Emily arrived she was visibly elated—tendrils of hair had escaped from her ponytail and curled around her face.

“I think I'm starting to get the hang of this therapy thing,” she said. “You'll never guess what Mr. Black did.”

“Let me guess. He didn't amputate his arm.”

“He got it tattooed.”

That was the last thing I'd expected.

“Got himself a fire-breathing dragon slithering from his wrist to his elbow. He tells me what the hell, he's going to have it cut off anyway. So now he's got this tattoo and he's enjoying putting it out there, watching people react, adjust their assessment of him.”

“Makes him feel powerful?” I said.

“Says he feels great. And attractive. And interesting. And before he knows it, he meets this woman. She comments on his tattoo. She thinks it's cool. She thinks
he's
cool.”

“And?”

“Just what you'd expect from two consenting adults.”

“Goes to show, patients never fail to surprise.”

“I do think I was able to help. He was saying that having his arm bound wasn't helpful. Made him feel more conspicuous, not less, and he couldn't stand the pity and disgust he saw in their eyes. It wasn't all that different from the way they looked at his arm. He said he might as well go around in short sleeves and flaunt it. So all I said was, ‘Maybe you should.'

“He just sat there. Looked at me like I'd whacked him upside the head with a two-by-four. Didn't even tell me he was going to do it. Just shows up for the next session in a short-sleeved shirt and gets the biggest kick out of my reaction. Truly, I was stunned.

“He's dropped that mantra about his arm and how he needs to cut it off. Thank God for that at least. And he's starting to introspect in ways he couldn't before. I think he's ready to try to figure out who he really is.”

“Congratulations. Now you can start on the real therapy.”

“I know there's still a lot of work to be done. But thank
you
,” Emily said. “This never would have happened if I'd kept pushing my own agenda on him. I'm so relieved that finally something is going right.” Her elation was contagious. “I feel like celebrating. I'm going to buy myself a drink after work—want to join me?”

I wanted to say yes, but there was a momentary hesitation that wouldn't have been there with any other post-doc. I pushed away the uneasiness. Why not savor this clear-cut success—such things were rare in this profession.

“Let me know when you're leaving,” I said. “I'm buying.”

Emily checked her watch. “I've got a six o'clock with a new patient. He should be here any minute. Okay if I come get you when I finish with him?” She paused on her way out the door. “I forgot to ask. Did you get a chance to look at those obituaries?”

“Yeah. I wanted to ask you about them. But we can talk about that after.”

I'd returned a half-dozen phone calls and was in the middle of editing a paper when Emily returned. “What happened? New patient get cold feet?” I asked.

“I guess. He never showed up.” Emily was slightly out of breath. “I just ran down to the lobby to be sure no one was there waiting for me. Then I called the number outpatient services gave me. It's disconnected.”

“That's odd,” I said. “And damned annoying.”

“Nothing can upset me today,” Emily said. She looked at me expectantly. Then at the papers I had spread over my desk. “Oh. You're still working?”

“Just give me some time to finish up.”

Twenty minutes later we took the elevator down to the basement and continued out through the tunnel.

“About the obituaries,” I said, handing her back the envelope, “tell me again where you found them?”

“They were in one of Leonard's file cabinets. He had them in a folder marked ‘invoices.'”

“That's odd.”

“I thought it was odd, too. Lenny was super-organized. That's what made me think he was hiding them.”

“From whom?”

“Dr. Shands? Dr. Pullaski? Me?” She thought for a minute more. “Patients? Obituaries of former patients would be last thing you'd want someone coming in for a medical test to see.”

“Did you think Leonard was concerned? Did he think there was something suspicious about any of those deaths?” I asked, holding open the door to the outside.

“If he did, he didn't tell me,” Emily said, pulling her jacket around her against the cool evening breeze.