20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(37)

“Back to the future—if you don’t mind my asking, in what capacity are you here today?”

“Friend of the family. That’s all.”

“Okay, Joe. I have a patient in fifteen minutes, so how can I help you?”





CHAPTER 54





JOE FIXED DR. MURRAY with a hard Don’t dare lie to me stare and said, “Dave feels that something untoward happened to Ray.”

“He’s made that pretty clear,” the doctor said. “He barged into the waiting room last week and accused me of murdering Ray. Murder. Me. In front of a roomful of people.”

The doctor shook his head. “Maybe I should be asking you how you can help me. I don’t want to have him arrested. Kid got dealt a beautiful hand, then it all got taken away, and he blames himself for that. Then his mother dies. Now his father. I feel terrible for him. But if he can’t get a grip on himself, he has to get help.”

“I have a couple of questions myself, Dr. Murray. Dave gave me a look at Ray’s medical charts, and the ME’s report says that Ray died of complications from his thoracic aortic aneurysm. Is that your opinion?”

“No doubt about it.”

Murray lined up his pens, straightened the plastic heart and the papers on his desk. He had a slight tremor in his hand.

He went on, “Ray refused to believe that he wasn’t in perfect health. He was seventy-two with the arteries of a man ten years older. I would tell him, time for a prostate test. Colorectal. Calcium score. CMIT. He wouldn’t take statins. He stopped taking his blood pressure meds. When he came to the ER, he told admissions that he felt tired and a little weak. He said he’d been working hard, not sleeping. Mr. Molinari, those are symptoms of about fifty things. You know what I call it? He had an invincibility complex.”

Murray stared over Joe’s head at the painting.

When he spoke again, his anger had cooled. He said, “Saint John’s isn’t Cedars-Sinai. It’s a country hospital, and we did our best, you understand? Ray’s blood pressure was high. Cholesterol was high. But he was stable. As I understand it, you saw Ray the day after he was admitted.”

“Yes, I did,” Joe said. “He looked good to me, sounded good, too, but I’m no expert.”

“I am an expert. I saw him on Saturday. I told him that after he got his MRI on Monday, if everything looked okay, we’d release him. I put in some provisos. That he was going to have to see me more often, do what his doctor ordered, blah, blah.

“Monday comes, he turns down the MRI. He said, ‘I don’t need it, Doc. I’m fine.’ I stopped by on Monday late afternoon to see his chart, make sure it was okay to release him the next day. He wasn’t hale. But again, he was stable. I prescribed a mild sleep aid.

“I was shocked when I got the call on Tuesday that he had died.”

Nurse Atkins leaned into the doorway.

“Doctor, your ten o’clock is here.”

Murray patted his jacket pocket, touched his glasses perched on his nose, and looked at his watch.

“Time got away from me.” To Atkins he said, “Just be a minute.”

When she had gone, he said, “No, it wasn’t the .5 milligrams of valium that killed him. It was his heart. Complications from his aneurysm. I feel terrible that we lost Ray. I miss him. But Dave is being very unfair to me. I save lives, Mr. Molinari. I don’t take them.”

“Dr. Murray. Thanks for your time. I’ll have a stress test when I get home.”

“Smart. Take care of yourself.”





CHAPTER 55





THE FORMER ROOMMATES shared a late lunch at the plank table in Dave’s great room with its soaring ceiling and 180-degree view of the vineyard.

“Talk to me,” Dave said. “What did that son of a bitch have to say for himself?”

Joe said, “Dave, you remember that I came up through the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI.”

“Yes, yes, I’ve seen the TV show. You were some kind of profiler.”

Joe sailed past Dave’s snarky humor and said, “I’m good at reading psychological cues.”

“I also watched The Mentalist.”

“I missed that one, Dave. So shut up for a minute, will you?”

Dave threw a sigh, drank wine, said, “Go ahead. Please.”

“Here’s what I gleaned from my meeting with Alex Murray. He’s a little distracted. He’s got a slight tremor in one hand, and that’s neurological or stress. He’s busy. And he’s highly pissed off at you for calling him a murderer in front of his patients, which, by the way, could get you sued.”

“I’m up for it. Tell him to go ahead and sue me. My countersuit will be quite a revelation to him.”

Joe gave Dave a warning look and went on. “He’s quite regretful about Ray, but he also fought his corner.”

“Arrogant asshole.” Dave emptied his glass.

“You know what he said to me, Dave? Words to the effect of, ‘I wish I’d been harder on Ray. But I know it wouldn’t have done any good. You can’t make people do what they don’t want to do. I tried. I’d tell him to take his blood pressure meds, and he’d tell me to fuck off.’”