“You better wait here,” Gratz said over the pounding music as he advanced toward the living room.
“Oh, Christ!” he shouted a second later. His eyes opened wide as his face contorted with horror. Jason looked between the arch and Larry’s body. The room was a nightmare.
The super ran for the kitchen, his hand clasped over his mouth. Even with his medical training, Jason felt his own stomach turn over. Helene and another woman were side by side on the couch, naked, with their hands tied behind their back. Their bodies had been unspeakably mutilated. A large, stained kitchen knife was jammed into the coffee table.
Jason turned and looked into the kitchen. Larry was bent over the kitchen sink, heaving. Jason’s first response was to help him, but he thought better of it. Instead, he went to the door to the hall and opened it, thankful for the fresh air. In a few minutes Larry stumbled past him.
“Why don’t you go call the police,” Jason said, allowing the door to close behind him. The relative quiet was refreshing. His nausea abated.
Thankful for something to do, Larry ran down the stairs. Jason leaned against the wall and tried not to think. He was trembling.
Two policemen arrived in short order. They were young and turned several shades of green when they looked into the living room. But they set about sealing off the scene and carefully questioning Jason and Gratz. With care not to disturb anything else, they finally pulled the plug on the stereo. More police arrived, including plainclothes detectives. Jason suggested Detective Curran might be interested in the case and someone called him. A police photographer arrived and began snapping shot after shot of the devastated apartment. Then the Cambridge medical examiner arrived.
Jason was waiting in the hall when Curran came lumbering toward Helene’s apartment.
Seeing Jason, he paused only to shout, “What the hell are you doing here?”
Jason held his tongue, and Curran turned to the policeman standing by the door. “Where’s the detective in charge?” he snapped, flashing his badge. The policeman jerked his thumb in the direction of the living room. Curran went in, leaving Jason in the hall.
The press appeared with their usual tangle of cameras and spiral notebooks. They tried to enter Helene’s apartment, but the uniformed policeman at the door restrained them. That reduced them to interviewing anybody in the area, including Jason. Jason told them he knew nothing, and they eventually left him alone.
After a while Curran reappeared. Even he looked a little green. He came over to Jason. He took a cigarette out of a crumpled pack and made a production out of finding a match. Finally, he looked at Jason.
“Don’t tell me ‘I told you so,’” he said.
“It wasn’t just a rape murder, was it?” Jason asked quietly.
“That’s not for me to say. Sure, it was a rape. What makes you think it was more?”
“The mutilation was done after death.”
“Oh? Why do you say that, doctor?”
“Lack of blood. If the women had been alive, there would have been a lot of bleeding.”
“I’m impressed,” Curran said. “And while I hate to admit it, we don’t think it was your ordinary loony. There’s evidence I can’t discuss but it looks like a professional job. A small-caliber weapon was involved.”
“Then you agree Helene’s death is tied to Hayes.”
“Possibly,” Curran said. “They told me you discovered the bodies.”
“With the help of the superintendent.”
“What brought you over here, doctor?”
Jason didn’t answer immediately. “I’m not sure,” he said finally. “As I told you, I had an uncomfortable feeling when Helene didn’t show up for work.”
Curran scratched his head, letting his attention wander around the hallway. He took a long drag on his cigarette, letting the smoke out through his nose. There was a crowd of police, reporters, and curious tenants. Two gurneys were lined up against the wall, waiting to take the bodies away.
“Maybe I won’t turn the case over to Vice,” Curran said at last. Then he wandered off.
Jason approached the policeman standing guard at the door to Helene’s apartment. “I was wondering if I could go now.”
“Hey, Rosati!” yelled the cop. The detective in charge, a thin, hollow-faced man with a shock of dark, unruly hair, appeared almost immediately.
“He wants to leave,” said the cop, nodding at Jason.
“We got your name and address?” Rosati asked.
“Name, address, phone, social security, driver’s license — everything.”
“I suppose it’s okay,” Rosati said. “We’ll be in touch.”
Jason nodded, then walked down the hallway on shaky legs. When he emerged outside on Concord Avenue, he was surprised it had already gotten dark. The cold evening air was heavy with exhaust fumes. As one final slap in the face, Jason found a parking ticket under his windshield wiper. Irritated, he pulled it out, realizing he’d parked in a zone that required a Cambridge resident sticker.
It took much longer for him to return to GHP than it had taken to drive to Helene’s apartment. The traffic on Storrow Drive was backed up exiting at Fenway, so it was about seven-thirty P.M. when he finally parked and entered the building. Going up to his office, he found a large computer printout on his desk listing all the GHP patients who had received executive physicals in the last year, along with a notation of the patient’s current physical status. The secretaries did a great job, Jason thought, putting the printout in his briefcase.
He went up to the floor for inpatient rounds. One of the nurses gave him the results of Madaline Krammer’s arteriogram. All the coronary vessels showed significant, diffuse, nonfocal encroachment. When the results were compared with a similar study done six months previously, it showed significant deterioration. Harry Sarnoff, the consulting cardiologist, did not feel she was a candidate for surgery, and with her current low levels of both cholesterol and fatty acids, had little to suggest with regard to her management. To be one hundred percent certain, Jason ordered a cardiac surgery consult, then went in to see her.
As usual, Madaline was in the best of moods, minimizing her symptoms. Jason told her that he’d asked a surgeon to take a look at her, and promised to stop by the next day. He had the awful sense that the woman was not going to be around much longer. When he checked her ankles for edema, Jason noted some excoriations.
“Have you been scratching yourself?” he asked.
“A little,” Madaline admitted, grasping the sheet and pulling it up as if she were embarrassed.
“Are your ankles itchy?”
“I think it’s the heat in here. It’s very dry, you know.”
Jason didn’t know. In fact, the air-conditioning system of the hospital kept the humidity at a constant, normal level.
With a horrible sense of déjà vu, Jason went back to the nurses’ station and ordered a dermatology consult as well as a chemistry screen that included some forty automated tests. There had to be something he was missing.
The rest of rounds was equally depressing. It seemed all his patients were in decline. When he left the hospital he decided to take a run out to Shirley’s. He felt like talking and she’d certainly made it clear she enjoyed seeing him. He also felt he should break the news of Helene’s murder before she heard it from the press. He knew it was going to devastate her.
It took about twenty minutes before he pulled into her cobblestone driveway. He was pleased to see lights on.
“Jason! What a pleasant surprise,” Shirley said, answering the bell. She was dressed in a red leotard with black tights and a white headband. “I was just on my way to aerobics.”
“I should have called.”