The Medical Murder Mystery

The chronological order of my stories is as follows:

Todd & Melina series, Interludes 1-5, Sperm Wars series, Russian Roulette series, Case of the Murdered Lovers series, Case of the Murdered Chessplayer series, The Swap series, Interludes 6-10, The Murdered Football Player Series, Case of the Black Widow series, Teresa's Christmas Story, The Case of the Black Badge series, A Case of Revenge series, Teresa's Summer Race, The Trilogy series, Dark Side Of The Force series, Caught In The Act series, Case of the Murdered Bride series, The Credit Card Caper series, The Hot Wives Investment Club series, Seriously Inconvenienced series, Case of the Paper Trail series, Christmas Mystery Theater, The Porno Set Mystery series.

The Medical Murder Mystery, Ch. 1-2.

Feedback and

constructive

criticism is very much appreciated, and I encourage feedback for ideas.

This story contains graphic scenes, language and actions that might be extremely offensive to some people. These scenes, words and actions are used only for the literary purposes of this story. The author does not condone murder, racial language, violence, rape or violence against women, and any depictions of any of these in this story should not be construed as acceptance of the above.

*****

Part 6 - The Crime

We arrived at 8:20am on Tuesday, January 6th. We were led by a uniformed officer into the office of Dr. Gloria Searles. I groaned as I saw her, lying flat on her belly on the floor behind her desk, looking towards her left, i.e. her left cheek was exposed and her right cheek pressed to the floor, her eyes closed. She was wearing the same clothes that she'd worn to the party the night before, but her shoes were under her desk. I could see where bullets had been fired into her head from close range behind her left ear.

"You okay, Commander?" Tanya asked, seeing the look on my face, one of shock and sadness.

I exhaled hard. "No." I said. "Goddammit... I know, I mean 'knew' this woman. I saw her just last night at the Wellman's party." I did not mention my vision of her Spirit visiting my bedroom early this morning, but the image was burning into my head.

"All right, let's act quickly here." I said. "Her husband is Dr. Richard Searles, a cardiologist at University Hospital. Perlman, call Ross at Headquarters and have her call my wife and get her to find out where he is. If he's on Campus, get my wife to bring him to Police Headquarters, unless he's in surgery or something. If not, get a couple of uniforms to find him and bring him in. Get him his minister if he has one, or a Chaplain if he needs one."

"Also: Tanya," I said to the MCD supervisor, "to whom are you

delegating

this case?" She got my drift.

"Martin Nash as the lead, Diana Torres working with him." Tanya said, knowing I did not want to hear her say herself. "I'll be staying with it through the forensic phase."

"That's fine." I said. "I need to talk to you and Nash and Torres. Call Myron and get him over here, I need him, and I need him here.

I looked around Gloria's office, seeing two little piles of medical folders on a table near the door, Gloria's desk neat and clean, the room clean and seemingly undisturbed except for Gloria's body on the floor. Turning to the senior Uniformed presence, I asked "So, Sergeant Rudistan, who found the body?"

"Her receptionist, Commander." said Rudistan. "She said Dr. Searles did not normally get here until 10:00am, as the patients they see are well-to-do and don't want to make appointments before eleven o'clock in the morning. The receptionist would get here by 8:00am, would pull files for the appointments for the day and have them ready, and then she'd get the files from the previous day from the table in Dr. Searles's office near the door, where these files are now, and begin putting information for the previous day's appointments into the computers."

"Oh, Dr. Searles did not do that herself?" I asked, peering that those piles of folders, one pile set in a wooden tray on the right side, the other on the table itself and in the very middle.

Rudistan was ready with his answer: "I asked the receptionist that, and she said that Dr. Searles did not like using her computer when talking with patients, and insisted paper files be pulled. Anyway, the receptionist came in to pull the files for today's appointments, and she saw the body lying on the floor."

"Where is the receptionist now?" I asked, looking out at the desk. Anyone sitting behind the desk would be facing the door to Dr. Searles's office.

"She's in the breakroom down the hall, with Officer Lydia Green staying with her." said Rudistan. "There are five doctors in this building, sharing the breakroom and common areas. We're not letting anyone but police into the building, and are holding anyone already inside where they are."

"Good. Good work." I said. "Interview everyone in the building, get their addresses and phone numbers. Unless someone has some knowledge or seems to have a connection to this crime, let them leave. Not the receptionist, just others that were caught up."

Myron Milton arrived as the Crime Lab team began coming in. As they began their forensics work, I gathered my Detectives at a small table near the reception desk area of Dr. Searles's office, and I sat down.

"Guys," I said, "I saw our victim at Dr. Wellman's party last night, so I'm going to try to save us all some time. I'm going to usurp your leadership of the case a bit by giving some instructions." Everyone nodded.

"First, I want you to call for warrants for every patient file Dr. Gloria Searles has, but I want you to to talk to her assistant and see if you can find out who was in here Monday and last Friday, especially yesterday, Monday. Those are probably going to be the files we really need to look at. The ones for yesterday might be on the table in Dr. Searles's office; that might make your job a little easier.

"Also, and especially you, Myron, I want you to run some hard background checks on a Dr. John D. Clifford, who is a University Law professor, his wife Darla Clifford, and a pharmacist at Smith-Morra Pharmacy named Lockhart. Lt. Ross filed a police report over the weekend regarding those three; I'm emailing access to it to you right now."

I continued: "I don't want the Cliffords brought in yet, nor this Lockhart guy, but I do want them tailed, and if they try to leave the County, then pick them up and bring them in. Nash, we're going to be interviewing all of them soon."

"Before you ask me questions," I said, seeing that Nash wanted to do so, "I don't want to say anything about what I know or suspect until we've looked at the body and the crime scene. I don't want to taint your fertile young minds with what might turn out to be erroneous information, and therefore bias your thinking. Okay, I'm going in to look at the body."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"All right, Labcoat, whaddya got?" I asked the man who was never seen without a labcoat on, and whose hair seemed more silvery than normal this morning.

"She hasn't been dead long, Commander." said Labcoat. "Body is still warmer than the ambient temperature of the room. Rigor has barely set in. I'd say she was killed between 4:00 and 5:30am."

"About five o'clock." I said, more to myself than anyone else.

"Sir?" said Labcoat.

"Oh... nothing, I was just thinking out loud about something." I said, recovering from my slip. I didn't think Labcoat would understand an apparition in the form of Gloria Searles appearing in my bedroom at that very time. "So what else do you have for me?"

"Two shots to the left side of the head, at very close range." said Labcoat. "Small caliber rounds, very likely a .22 Long Rifle or .22 Magnum. Both went nearly all the way through the head, but neither exited. Bit of bulging on the right side of the head, though that might have been compressed back in when she fell and came to rest on the floor. No expended cartridges have been found. No footprints, no blood trails. The filing cabinets behind the desk here were all closed, but she may have been standing and looking at one of them when the killer came in."

"Yes." I said, seeing the pattern. From the door to the office, Gloria's desk was on the left side and sofas and chairs were on the right side. The office was not wide but was deep. The doors on the back wall led to a small bathroom, possibly where urine samples were given, and to a hallway that led to a lab area... and that connected with other doctor's offices. The wall behind Gloria's desk was lined with cabinets, which actually were drawers that kept hardcopy records of all patient files. Of course, computers also had the data stored electronically.

Gloria's body was behind her desk, as if she had been looking in the filing cabinets. Someone could've snuck in, ambushed her, shot her in the head, and then been gone in the flash of an eye.

"Any sign of sexual assault, or anything to suggest she knew her killer was in the room?" I asked.

"Not likely a sexual assault, though we'll be doing a full rape kit as part of the routine. But her skirt is pretty tight on her body, and it shows no sign of having been removed. I won't go into the physics of why it would be difficult as hell to get her dressed again and leave no evidence of it or any blood anywhere, either. I think she was dressed like this when she dropped dead, and her body was not moved."

"Yeah, I'm with you on that." I said.

"Commander," said Martin Nash, "the receptionist said the clothes she's wearing are the clothes she put on when she left yesterday. She was wearing blue scrubs yesterday for her appointments, then dressed for the party she was attending at the University President's home."

"What time did she leave?" I asked.

"About 7:00pm." Nash said. "The receptionist said that Dr. Searles normally would have appointments from 11:00am to as late as 8 or 9pm. Last night she left for the party at 7:00pm."

"So who took off her shoes, and why?" asked Labcoat. "Anything strange in that?"

"I doubt it." I said. "The shoes are high heels and she probably was not comfortable in them. I imagine she came in, sat down at her desk, took her shoes off, and was looking into the files when someone came in and shot her. You can analyze them, though, see if anything comes up."

A Crime Lab technician came up. "Sir, no fingerprints on the doors except those of the receptionist. No partials or smudges underneath, either. Looks like the doorknobs were wiped clean, then the receptionist touched them when she came in."

"Okay, thank you." I said, dismissing the technician. I then said to Nash "Hmm, a strangeness... that the knobs were wiped clean in the first place."

"By the way, Commander," said Nash, "the receptionist is a bit fired up about us seizing any medical files, even with a warrant. She called a lawyer."

"All right." I said. I went into the front room. "Torres, have you started looking at these stack of files, yet?"

"No sir." said Detective Diana Torres. "The receptionist claimed they're legally privileged information. She wants a lawyer and a warrant before we can look at them."

I began looking at the files, looking at the names on the outside, but not opening the folders. I did not see the name I was expecting to see. I left the files as I found them.

"If someone wants to bitch about me reading a name in plain sight," I said, "let them. Y'all saw that I did not open the files, so they can't bitch about that." Just then my cell phone rang. It was the lovely ADA Paulina Patterson.

"Hi Don," she said, "I went to get your warrants, and Chase, Lynch & Berry beat me to Folsom. He wants more specifics, and wants to narrow it down. He's telling the Beagles to S-T-F-U about not getting

any

warrants for

any

information, but he admits a point on specifics, and says medical records require a high degree of attention to privacy."

"Okay, I'll type up an email for you." I said. After hanging up, I went to my SUV, got my laptop computer, and brought it inside. I typed up an email, requesting the financial records of the company that was the practice partnership; all cell phone records of all of the doctors in the building as well as phone records of the offices; Dr. Gloria Searles's records of appointments, both paper and digital; as well as the files, paper and electronic, of those patients she saw the previous day (Monday) and the previous Friday. I added my explanations of why I wanted that data, then sent the email to Judge Folsom, with a copy to Paulina.

I had my warrant within fifteen minutes. I had Myron Milton on the computers extracting the data within another fifteen minutes.

Part 7 - Interviews

I sat in as Martin Nash interviewed the receptionist, whose name was Jill. She was in her early 20s, single, and was going to Nursing School. Her answers are condensed here:

She would come in at 8:00am and get out the files for that day's appointments, cross-check the data in them with the data in the computers, and then put those files in a drawer in her front desk. Then she would enter the data from the previous day's appointments from the file folders into the computers. Dr. Searles thought it was very bad practice to sit staring at a computer with a patient sitting in the room, as many doctors would do; she preferred to talk to the patient and make written notes.

She had come in this morning and was going to extract the files for that day's appointments from where they were kept behind Dr. Searles's desk. She saw the body when she opened the room, screamed, and ran back into the front room. Dr. Hartwell had run in, checked and found Dr. Searles dead, and called the Police. No one else had gone into the room.

She did not know of anyone who wanted to harm Gloria Searles. Gloria was impersonal but not mean or hateful to anyone, and she was professional and not overbearing to anyone. She never said anything bad about her husband or gave any indication that she had anything but a happy marriage.

Dr. Guy Hartwell looked like he was in his thirties, almost boyish in appearance, tall and lanky. So I was a bit shocked to learn he was nearly 50 years old. He was good with children and had a folksy, Southern manner about him. He was married with three children, as well.

He said that he and Gloria had known each other for the six years of their medical partnership, that he'd known Gloria's husband even longer, and that he had had no problems of any kind with either of them. He did not know of any problems between the Searles's, nor any problems either had with anyone else. He did not know of any problems within the business, except that Dr. Muncey had discussed possibly leaving the partnership and going on her own.

Dr. Dembo was a European and a nerve specialist. He knew Dr. Searles professionally for five years, did not have any problems with her nor knew anyone who did. He was not comfortable answering questions, though. His answers were short and he never elaborated on anything, even when a question suggested that he should. I could not tell if that was a language issue, if he was naturally reserved, or if he was being evasive.

Dr. Yelena was a pediatrician and as such was very good with children. She was part Asian and part European in ethnicity. She liked Gloria, they often went to lunch together if they had time, and she knew of no one else that had any issues with her. She thought Gloria's marriage was good and strong. The only thing she'd heard about the company is that Dr. Muncey might be leaving in the next few months, but nothing was certain about that.

Dr. Caroline Muncey, who I knew because Laura was a patient of hers during the time of Laura's hysterectomy, said that she and Gloria got along fine, that there were no problems that she knew of between Gloria and any of the people at the practices, that everyone seemed to get along fine. She (Caroline) had discussed the possibility of leaving and starting her own practice, but those had only been preliminary discussions, would be months away in happening even if she decided to... and she had not decided to by any means.

"So, Martin," I said, "anything stick out to you?"

"No sir." said Nash. "No data yet, as you like to say. The only issue I saw was that Dr. Muncey might leave. We'll have to go over the books to see how badly that might affect the overall company."

"I agree." I said. "Anything else?"

"No sir, their stories matched in every way that I could see." said Nash. "Nobody saying over here that persons A and B fought a lot while everyone else denies it, and such. What did I miss?"

"Not a thing, not a damn thing." I replied. "Okay, let's go ask Detective Torres how things are going with the medical files.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"So far, sir," said Torres, "there is only one person with a discrepancy between the file and the appointment calendar. One Darla Clifford was here yesterday morning, but her file was not in the stack of those for data to be entered."

"Oh, Darla Clifford." I said. "Withhold my surprise."

"Sir?" asked Torres.

"Nothing, Diana. Please, continue." I said.

Diana said "The receptionist said she did not process that file. I checked, and the file is in its proper cabinet in the drawers behind Dr. Searles's desk. I pulled it, wearing gloves, but the Crime Lab said no fingerprints except the receptionist's and Dr. Searles's were on it or on any of the papers inside the files."

Then Diana hit me with the bombshell. "However, sir, two pages were missing from the file. They were torn out of the file folder, and were the ones on top, suggesting the notes from yesterday's appointment were the ones taken. They had not yet been entered into the computer, so we do not know what Dr. Searles's notes were."

"Has the trash been secured?" I asked.

"Yes sir." Diana replied. "The trash was emptied last night, and there was nothing in any trash cans in the building this morning, and nothing in a preliminary examination of the dumpster outside. I'm thinking the killer took those pages away."

"Excellent work, jumping on that so fast." I said, praising Torres. I was indeed impressed. "What about Darla's previous visits?" I asked.

"There was a routine checkup in early November." said Diana. "Dr. Searles made a handwritten note that Darla had a bruise on her lower leg, but nothing further, and the rest of the routine checkup showed no problems."

"Hmmm, bruise on her leg..." I said, more to myself than anyone else. Then I remembered something.

"Martin, get the receptionist and bring her in here. Right now." I ordered. Nash stalked off, and a minute later brought Jill back into room.

"Jill," I said, "yesterday, were there any problems between Dr. Searles and any of the patients? Any arguments?"

"No sir, not that I remember." Jill said.

"I want you to try to remember harder." I said. "Did anyone come storming out, was anyone angry when they left, anyone at all?"

"No, sir."

"Not Darla Clifford?" I asked, boring in on the girl.

"Uhhh, she didn't seem angry. She left hurriedly, but many people do that."

"There was no arguing, no yelling inside the office when Darla was in there?" I asked.

"No sir."

"Jill," I said, "I need to be very, very clear with you: lying to police is a criminal offense, and you could go to jail for it. Are you sure you want to continue to lie to me?"

"I'm not lying." Jill said, becoming defiant.

"So you maintain that Darla Clifford did not yell, was not angry, did not leave in a hurry or angrily?"

"I will answer no more of your questions. I am invoking my right to remain silent. I want a lawyer, and will answer no more questions without legal representation. Am I free to go?"

"Well, you've certainly been well coached on what to say, haven't you?" I said, my voice quiet and level. "And you called a lawyer when we came in here. Hmmm..."