20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(36)

Between the two waiting areas was a shared nurse’s station behind sliding glass windows.

Joe flipped through a month-old Newsweek without reading it. He felt like some kind of fraud, a sometime G-man, now a private eye without a license, helping out a friend he hardly knew in a twisted endeavor he no longer believed in.

He’d done the spadework, read the medical examiners’ reports, met with family members who’d lost a loved one in the previous year to an unexpected heart attack while at Saint John’s in the care of Dr. Alexander Murray.

With the exception of Archer, the writer whose now-deceased thirtysomething fiancée had been a long-distance runner, none of the family members had hinted that Dr. Murray was to blame for the death of their loved one. And so Joe had stirred up grieving people with nothing to support a suspicious cause of death.

And why had he done this? Because Dave Channing had become more restless and paranoid as the visit had gone on, and Joe had promised that he would do his best to clear it up: either validate or debunk his concerns.

Before leaving the Channing Winery this morning, he’d gotten Dave to agree that whether he accepted Joe’s conclusions or not, Joe was going home that night.

Now he was wondering if he was wronging his friend by setting an arbitrary deadline. Good investigators didn’t do that.

Joe and Lindsay had spoken on the phone an hour ago as she drove to work. Her voice had been strained as she told him about Claire and how helpless she felt. He pictured Lindsay’s face, taut with fear and exhaustion.

He had done his best to comfort her, but Lindsay had been too agitated to hear more than “I’ll be home tonight.”

“God. That would be great,” she said. “Promise me.”

“I promise to try like crazy.”

Joe tossed the magazine on the chair beside him and hoped that soon he could resolve the complicated feelings of disloyalty and suspicion by determining one of two possible truths, that either Dave was losing his mental grip—or that Dr. Murray had caused Ray Channing’s death.





CHAPTER 53





A FIFTYISH NURSE with graying cinnamon-colored hair, wearing green scrubs, paused in the entrance to the waiting room.

“Mr. Molinari, if you’ll come with me, the doctor will be with you shortly.”

Joe followed her down a hall to a small office and took the offered seat across from the desk. Murray’s office was a plain brown study with a tidy desk opposite a couple of bookcases. There was a plastic model of a heart that could be broken down into valves, ventricles, and arteries on the desk. Between the bookcases was an oil painting of vineyards at sunset. Joe recognized the style. Nancy Channing had painted that.

“I’m Carolee Atkins,” said the nurse. “We spoke on the phone yesterday.”

Joe said, “I remember. Thanks for fitting me in.”

“Would you like me to weigh you and take your blood pressure just for the hell of it?”

Joe grinned and said, “No, thanks. I’m up to date. Six one, 178, 127 over 70.”

Atkins smiled and said, “Very good, Mr. Molinari. How’s Dave doing?”

Joe made the universal hand motion for so-so and added, “He doesn’t understand why his father went from alive and well to suddenly dead.”

Atkins said, “That happens with thoracic aortic aneurysms, but that’s my unofficial opinion. Ray has been a patient and friend of Dr. Murray’s for over five years. I guess I can tell you that the doctor is heartbroken. He considers Dave a friend, too. Hold on. I’ll see how much longer he’ll be.”

Joe said, “Wait. Explain ‘heartbroken.’”

The nurse hesitated, then stepped back into the office.

“Obviously, Dr. Murray cared about Ray Channing very much, and he cares about Dave, too. Dave is taking his grief out on Dr. Murray, which is so unfair and maybe a little bit unbelievable.”

“Really?”

“See for yourself. I don’t know exactly what salt of the earth means, but I’m pretty sure Dr. Murray fits the definition. I’ll make sure he knows you’re here.”

Five minutes later Dr. Murray entered the room. He was a white-haired man in his sixties, about twenty pounds overweight, wearing metal-framed glasses and a bright-red tie under his lab coat.

He smiled as he introduced himself and shook Joe’s hand. Then he said, “You look familiar. Do I know you?”

Joe said, “You might have seen me on the news years ago. I was with Homeland Security during the Bush administration.”

“Maybe that was it,” said Dr. Murray. He went around his desk, sat down, felt his coat pocket for his glasses, then touched them on the bridge of his nose.

“These things are so light, you can’t even feel them.” He smiled, then said, “You’re Dave Channing’s friend. I’ve gotten his letter giving me permission to discuss Ray’s condition up to and including his death.”

“I’m trying to help Dave reconcile how his father seemed so healthy before he died.”

“I understand. I know you and Dave are very close. Ray showed me pictures of you two in your football uniforms. He talked about you like you were a second son.”

“Ray came to all of our games. We always knew where he was sitting in the stands from his yelling and cheering.”