The Skeleton's Knee (20 page)

The La Salle Motor Court was not as bad as I’d feared from Runnion’s lackluster endorsement. It was a standard-issue motel—two floors, flat roof, exterior staircases, all wrapped around an open-sided parking lot. Although it was old and slightly battle-scarred, it was clean and, for the moment at least, relatively quiet, barring the expected traffic noise. Given my personal habits, I was as happy here—especially with the fast-food restaurant I’d noticed at the corner—as I might be in downtown Brattleboro.

Much later, unable to sleep, I stood by the window, with all the lights off, looking down across the parking lot at the street. There was no view to speak of—just the traffic and the buildings opposite—but the activity was impressive. At a time when most people in Brattleboro were either heading for bed or groping for a midnight snack, this street was humming with twenty-four-hour, round-the-clock energy.

I’d read in some old guidebook that Chicago had 3 million residents—six times the population of Vermont. It made me wonder just how many of them were out there now, walking, driving, working, partying, breaking and entering, or just breaking—the law and each other’s heads—and how many of those I might get to meet personally.

Norm Runnion’s parting words of caution came back clearly to mind.

NORTHWESTERN’S MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
was half a block away from the city’s flamboyant old Water Tower, a bright yellow stone survivor of the famous 1871 fire, and at one point, the tallest structure around. That distinction was downright quaint now, since the tower had all the impact of an overdesigned Lego castle next to its flashy, looming, monstrous neighbors.

The hospital, by contrast, was a nondescript urban box, wedged between two busy streets, across from the university’s Chicago campus. I entered the front lobby, looked for the Orthopedic Department, and headed for the elevators.

I’d thought about the various approaches I could take at this early stage, including dragging Runnion along with all his vested authority. But I’d opted for a quieter angle first. Doctors, I’d discovered, have an unusual empathy for what plainclothes policemen do. Perhaps there’s a shared conservatism there, or a sense that we’re both investigators of a sort, or that we play sympathetic roles in the standard human tragedies, but whatever the link, I’ve often found them to be interested and responsive to most low-key inquiries.

My problems, however, were not only that I was a fish out of water, holding a badge with all the impact of a costume prop, but that I was pursuing ancient history. I walked up to the registration counter in Orthopedics and leaned in close to speak quietly with a young nurse who was flipping through a thick file.

She looked up with a slightly pasted-on smile. “Do you have your card?”

“No. I’m not a patient.” I quickly showed her my badge, covering the clearly written
Brattleboro
across its top with my fingers. “I was wondering if I could speak with either the head of the department or one of its surgeons who was working here, or at least in Chicago, in 1969.”

She stared at me as if I’d just spoken in Latin. “1969?”

“Yes, that’s right. We’re investigating an old case that has recently been reopened, and I’m looking for some expert advice from someone who was working back then.”

I kept my most pleasant smile in place as I watched her blink a couple of times and scratch her head. “Well, this is a first. Let me ask around. What’s your name?”

“Lieutenant Joe Gunther.”

“Hang on a second, would you?” She rose and vanished through a back door, leaving me to prop my elbow on the counter and gaze across the roomful of waiting patients.

She returned a few minutes later, ushered me to a small office down the hallway, and asked me to wait. I did so, reading the framed diplomas and wondering if their owner was the man I was supposed to be meeting. He was certainly of the right vintage—Milton Yancy, Northwestern University Medical School, 1965.

A very short, round, pink-faced man with bristly white hair and a flowered tie bustled through the door and stood looking up at me with a bemused expression on his face. He stuck out a pudgy hand. “Lieutenant? Dr. Yancy at your service. You’ve caused quite a bit of tittering up and down the hallway.”

“Sorry. I tried to be discreet.”

He laughed and sat on the narrow examination table pushed up against the wall, his feet dangling. “Don’t worry about it. I haven’t seen them this animated in quite a while. I hope I’ll be allowed to satisfy their curiosity later.”

I smiled back, pleased by his relaxed manner. “I’ll leave that to you—it’s not confidential.” I opened the oversized manila envelope I’d been carrying and extracted the X-rays and photographs. “These are of a skeleton buried approximately twenty years ago, which we just recently discovered. He had an artificial knee implanted shortly before he died. We think the implant was sold in Chicago in early 1969, but we don’t know who bought it, nor do we know who did the surgery.”

“But it was done at Northwestern.”

I hesitated, sorry to disappoint him. “We don’t know that, either.”

His eyes narrowed and he looked up from the documents I’d handed him. “You said the implant was sold in ’69. Does that mean you’re not even sure the surgery was done that year?”

“I’m afraid not.”

He shook his head. “Good Lord. Are you planning to talk to every orthopedist who was practicing in Chicago back then?”

I put on a brave smile. “I’m hoping to get lucky.”

He looked back at the X-rays and held one up against the light from the window. “Who made this device?”

“Articu-Tech,” I said hopefully.

“Never heard of them. Decent knee, though—a little on the heavy side; European influence.”

“The medical examiner in Vermont found that the cement was impregnated with antibiotics, which an orthopedist friend of mine said implied a hasty operation—one that most likely took place immediately following the trauma. They both agreed that was a sign of a real hotshot, a maverick.”

“Gambling with somebody else’s money,” Yancy muttered, studying the X-ray with renewed interest. “Any idea what kind of trauma it was?”

“No.” Although I was tempted to theorize.

Dr. Yancy finally slid all the pictures back into the envelope and returned them to me. “I can’t help you specifically. The knee’s not familiar, nor is any scenario that might have promoted such haste with the implantation. I was here in 1969, at this hospital in fact, and I’m pretty sure I would remember such a case.”

I nodded, resigned to hitting the road again.

But Yancy wasn’t quite finished. “I am intrigued by the possible motivations behind such a procedure. Your friend was correct, of course—the surgeon was a hotshot, and there weren’t too many of them around in ’69. For that matter, there aren’t too many of them around now. It’s rarely rewarding to stick your neck out in practice without a lot of previous homework. Someone sure did this time, though.”

There was a moment’s silence, during which I murmured, “We think a significant amount of money might have played a part in this.”

Yancy grunted. “It’s possible. Someone who was underpaid, under-recognized, and rash might have found some under-the-counter cash rewarding in several ways, but I wouldn’t downplay the psychological aspects here. We’re a careful, cautious, sometimes even paranoid profession when the risk of a lawsuit drifts our way. We can also be tied to stifling traditional and conventional philosophies. And all this was even truer twenty years ago.

“Many a young surgeon has been known to champ at the bit. That can cause the institution that employs him to bear down and the individual to become sullen and resentful.”

I tapped the envelope with my fingertip. “And you think this might have been the case here?”

He stuck his lower lip out meditatively. “It’s purely hypothetical, but it fits. Medically, there’s no reason to justify the kind of speed that was demonstrated here, which means the motivation lies not with the patient’s medical needs but perhaps with the surgeon’s and the patient’s emotional needs working in tandem. That would more fully explain why the surgeon took the risk—along with the money, it would have been a double revenge against a repressive system.”

I liked it, but as Yancy had implied, it didn’t mean much without a cast of characters. “So where does that leave me?”

He snapped out of his reverie and smiled, spreading his hands. “It leaves me wishing you good luck.” He hopped off the table and opened the door, ushering me out. “I recommend that you go next to the University of Chicago campus, however. Talk to Dr. Philip Hoolihan in Orthopedics. He’s as old as Moses, been in the business forever, and is a homegrown Chicago boy. What you’ve got in that envelope amounts to a passport photo in this business. Hoolihan might recognize it. I’ll give him a call and warm him up a little—he’s not quite as approachable as I am.”

I thanked Dr. Yancy and returned to where I’d parked my car, considerably more hopeful than I’d been an hour ago. Much of it was the comfort of simply getting back to work, instead of acting like a tourist; but it also had something to do with Yancy’s thoughtful meditation. His sending me to Hoolihan was no casual suggestion—it was a definite direction, but given, for reasons of his own, with discretion.

The University of Chicago is built in Old English Gothic style, swarming with rampant gargoyles, crenellations, iron-spiked stone spires, and offset by clusters of tree-shaded quadrangles and a field-sized midway similar in scope to the Mall in downtown Washington, D.C. The whole thing is as incongruous as a Rolls-Royce at a bicycle convention. With more or less fire-gutted, violence-torn, poor neighborhoods all around it, Hyde Park—the area to which the university is overlord—looks captive, besieged, and yet stubbornly wishful, perhaps realizing it has little choice but to hang on.

The broad, courtly, almost royal facade of the school’s medical center further added to the fantasy. I forgot for a moment where I was, so convincing was the allusion to a long-gone Europe, and I slowly entered the building’s courtyard embrace thoroughly impressed by what enough Rockefeller money could do.

Several minutes later, and several floors higher up, I didn’t even have to see Philip Hoolihan to understand Dr. Yancy’s subtle warning about his ineffability. His secretary’s attitude was enough.

“You have no appointment,” she stated flatly, her cold blue eyes contrasting sharply with a soft and luxuriant snow-white hairdo.

I had purposefully announced my name only, not my profession, hoping a show of diplomacy might stand me in good stead. “Dr. Milton Yancy just called. Perhaps Dr. Hoolihan hasn’t had a chance to tell you.”

She resisted using the phone to confirm that. “I seriously doubt it. What is the purpose of your visit?”

“I’m conducting a police investigation,” I reluctantly admitted, utterly convinced of where we were heading with this.

“You’re a policeman?” Her tone let me know just how pathetic she thought my plight to be.

“Yes.”

“May I see some identification?”

I inwardly sighed. Flashing an out-of-state badge was definitely not going to work here, meaning some twenty more minutes would be wasted while Norm Runnion was located and my Valkyrie interrogator satisfied. I decided to use her own methods against her. “I’ll present those to Dr. Hoolihan himself, who is waiting for me, no matter what you’ve been told.”

There was a long, electrically charged pause, during which I impassively returned her ice-cold glare. Finally, no doubt wishing it was my right eye, she stabbed a button on her intercom with the eraser end of her pencil. “Doctor, were you expecting a visit from the police?”

“Send him in.”

Her face darkened and she pointed to a door behind her, without an additional word.

Hoolihan’s office fit the architecture that surrounded it: vast, high-ceilinged, with dark wood-paneled walls and a long stretch of tall diamond-paned windows that reminded me of a captain’s cabin in an ancient man-of-war. The furniture was burnished mahogany, the desk lamp Tiffany, and the drapes and rugs enough to make Scarlett O’Hara weep with envy.

Parked behind the aircraft carrier-sized desk was the man himself—big, bald, and broad across the shoulders, with a craggy, impenetrably hard face, overshadowed by a pair of run-amok tufted white eyebrows.

“Show me the X-rays,” he ordered, indicating the gleaming field of wood before him.

I pulled them out silently and laid them out before him.

He picked them up one by one, swiveled around in his chair, and held them up to the windows behind him. Eventually, he put the last one down and fixed me with a hard, angry look. “What did this man die of?”

“A gunshot wound to the chest.”

His eyes wavered, but only for a second. “You’re not a Chicago cop.” It wasn’t a question.

“No, sir—I’m from Vermont.” I began to dig for my credentials, wondering what had tipped him off.

He waved me to be still. “I don’t care. Go see Kevin Shilly.”

I leaned over the desk and gathered up the negatives. “Who’s he?”

Hoolihan bristled. “Who are you looking for?”

“He’s the surgeon who did this?”

“Ask him.”

I refilled my large manila envelope. “Can you tell me—”

The old man placed both his hands on the desk, as if he was about to vault out of his chair. His face was red with fury. “No, I cannot. What Dr. Shilly may or may not have done is between you and him. He is no longer associated with this facility or this university and is, therefore, not my responsibility.”

“There was bad blood about his departure?”

Hoolihan turned to face the windows. “Good day.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” I said to the back of his head and left the office.

Normally, I would have chatted with the secretary a bit, trying to get a handle on Kevin Shilly’s obviously turbulent history here. But her loyalty to her boss had been made clear a mere three minutes earlier, and I wasn’t too hopeful. Other options would have been to drop by the administrative offices or to find another friendly face in the Orthopedic Department, but Milton Yancy’s words about medical hierarchies came back to me as if in warning. Chances were good that with a man like Hoolihan at the top, people would not be as free-spoken as I needed.