"Have you spoken to your aunt's doctors? Perhaps they can clear this up."
"I'd prefer not to speak to them."
"Why not?"
"Given the situation, I'm not sure I trust them."
"I see." Now Katzka did sigh. He picked up his pen and flipped to a fresh page in his notebook. "Why don't you give me the names of all your aunt's doctors."
"The physician in charge was Dr. ColinWettig. But the one who really seemed to be making all the decisions was that resident of his. I think she's the one you should look at."
"Her name?"
"Dr. DiMatteo."
Katzka glanced up in surprise. "Abigail DiMatteo?"
There was a brief silence. Katzka could see consternation clearly written on Brenda's face.
She said, cautiously, "You know her."
"I've spoken to her. On another matter."
"It won't affect your judgment on this case, will it?"
"Not at all."
"Are you certain?" She challenged him with a gaze he found irritating. He was not easily irritated, and he had to ask himself now why this woman so annoyed him.
Lundquist chose that moment to walk past the desk, and he flashed what could only be characterized as a sympathetic smirk. Lundquist should have interviewed this woman. It would have been good for him, an exercise in polite restraint, which Lundquist needed to develop.
Katzka said: "I always try to be objective, Miss Hainey."
"Then you should take a close look at Dr. DiMatteo."
"Why her in particular?"
"She's the one who wanted my aunt dead."
Brenda's charges struck Katzka as improbable. Still, there was the matter of that note and who had sent it. One possibility was that Brenda had sent it to herself; stranger things had been done by people hungry for attention. That was easier for him to believe than what she was claiming had happened: that Mary Allen had been murdered by her doctors. Katzka had spent weeks watching his wife slowly die in the hospital, so he was well acquainted with cancer wards. He had witnessed the compassion of nurses, the dedication of oncologists. They knew when to keep fighting for a patient's life. They also knew when the fight was lost, when the suffering outweighed the benefits of one more day, one more week, of life. There had been times towards the end, when Katzka had wanted desperately to ease Annie across the final threshold. Had the doctors suggested such a move, he would have agreed to it. But they never had. Cancer killed quickly enough; which doctor would risk his professional future to hurry along a patient's death? Even if Mary Allen's doctors had made such a move, could one truly consider it homicide?
It was with reluctance that he drove to Bayside Hospital that afternoon after Brenda Hainey's visit. He was obligated to make a
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few inquiries. At the hospital's public information office, he confirmed that Mary Allen had indeed expired on the date Brenda said she had, and that the diagnosis had been undifferentiated metastatic carcinoma. The clerk could give him no other information. Dr. Wettig, the attending, was in surgery and unavailable for the afternoon. So Katzka picked up the phone and paged Abby DiMatteo.
A moment later she called back.
"This is Detective Katzka," he said. "We spoke last week."
"Yes, I remember."
"I have some questions on an unrelated matter. Where can I meet you?"
"I'm in the medical library. Is this going to take a long time?"
"It shouldn't."
He heard a sigh. Then a reluctant: "OK. The library's on the second floor, Administrative wing."
In Katzka's experience, the average person — provided he or she was not a suspect — enjoyed talking to homicide cops. People were curious about murder, about police work. He'd been astonished by the questions they asked him, even the sweetest-faced old ladies, everyone longing to hear the details, the bloodier the better. Dr. DiMatteo, however, had sounded genuinely unwilling to speak to him. He wondered why.
He found the hospital library tucked between data processing and the financial office. Inside were a few aisles of bookshelves, a librarian's desk, and a half-dozen study carrels along one wall. Dr. DiMatteo was standing beside the photocopier, positioning a surgical journal on the plate. She'd already collated a number of papers into piles, and had stacked them on a nearby desk. It surprised him to see her performing such a clerical task. He was also surprised to see her dressed in a skirt and blouse rather than the scrub clothes he'd assumed was the uniform of all surgical residents. From the first day he'd met Abby DiMatteo, he'd thought her an attractive woman. Now, seeing her in a flattering skirt, with all that black hair hanging loose about her shoulders, he decided she was really quite stunning.
Shelooked up and gave a nod. That's when he noticed something else different about her today. She seemed nervous, even a little wary.
"I'm almost finished," she said. "I have one more article to copy." "Not on duty today?"
"Excuse me?"
"I thought surgeons lived in scrubsuits."
She placed another page on the Xerox machine and hit the Copy button. "I'm not scheduled for the OR today. So I'm doing a literature search. Dr. Wettig needs these for a conference." She stared down at the copier, as though the flashing light, the machine's whiff, required all her concentration. When the last pages rolled out, she took them to the table, where the other stacks lay waiting, and sat down. He pulled out the chair across from her. She picked up a stapler, then set it back down again.
Still not looking at him, she asked: "Have there been new developments?"
"In regards to Dr. Levi, no."
"I wish I could think of something new to tell you. But I can't." She gathered up a few pages and stapled them together with a sharp snap of the wrist.
"I'm not here about Dr. Levi," he said. "This is about a different matter. A patient of yours."
"Oh?" She picked up another stack of papers and slid it between the stapler teeth. "Which patient are we talking about?"
"A Mrs Mary Allen."
Her hand paused for a second in midair. Then it came down, hard, on the stapler.
"Do you remember her?" he asked.
"Yes."
"I understand she died last week. Here, at Bayside."
"That's right."
"Can you confirm that her diagnosis was metastatic undifferentiated carcinoma?"
"Yes."
"And was she in the terminal stages?"
"Yes."
"Then her death was expected?"
There was a hesitation. It was just long enough to notch up his alertness.
She said, slowly, "I would say it was expected."
He was watching her more closely, and she seemed to know it. He didn't say anything for a moment. Silence, in his experience, was far more unnerving. Quietly he asked: "Was her death in any way unusual?"
At last she looked up at him. He realized she was sitting absolutely still. Almost rigid.
"In what way unusual?" she asked.
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"The circumstances. The manner in which she expired."
"Can I ask why you're pursuing this?"
"A relative of Mrs Allen's came to us with some concerns."
"Are we talking about Brenda Halhey? The niece?"
"Yes. She thinks her aunt died of causes unrelated to her disease." "And you're trying to turn this into a homicide?"
"I'm trying to determine if there's anything worth investigating. Is there?"
She didn't answer.
"Brenda Hainey received an anonymous note. It claimed that Mary Allen didn't die of natural causes. Do you have any reason, any reason at all, to think there might be substance to that?"
He could have predicted several likely responses. She might have laughed and said this was all ridiculous. She might have told him that Brenda Hainey was crazy. Or she might show puzzlement, even a flash of anger, that she was being subjected to these questions. Any one of those reactions would have been appropriate. What he did not expect was her actual response.