Ashmore’s wife yesterday, and she said he hired grad students from the
university. So maybe Herbert has enough technical knowledge to know
what Ashmore was looking for in Chad’s chart.”
Ashmore’s wife? What’d you do, pay a grief call?”
“Yes. Nice lady. Ashmore was quite an interesting fellow.” I told
him about the couple’s time in the Sudan, Ashmore’s gambling systems
and investments.
“Blackjack, huh? Must have been good.”
“She said he was a math genius-computer wizard. Brown belt in several
martial arts, too. Not exactly easy prey for a mugger.
“No? I know you used to do all that good stuff, and I never wanted to
disillusion you, but I’ve seen plenty of martial artists with tags on
their toes. It’s one thing in a ~, bowing and jumping around and
screaming like there’s a hatpin in your colon. Whole different story
out on the streets. Incidentally, I checked with Hollywood Division on
Ashmore’s murder and they’re giving a low solve probability. Hope the
widow isn’t pinning her hopes on law enforcement.”
“The widow is still too dazed to hope.”
“Yeah…”
“What?”
“Well,” he said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about your case-the
psychology of this whole Munchausen thing-and it seems to me we’ve
missed a potential suspect.”
“Who?”
“Your buddy Steph.”
“Stephanie? Why?”
“Female, medical background, likes to test authority, wants to be in
the center of things.”
“I never thought of her as attention-seeking.”
“Didn’t you tell me she was some big radical in the old days, Chairman
of the interns’ union?”
“Sure, but she seemed sincere. Idealistic.”
“Maybe. But look at it this way: Treating Cassie puts her smack at the
center of things, and the sicker the kid is, the more Stephanie gets
the spotlight. Playing rescuer, big hero, rushing over to the
Emergency Room and taking charge. The fact that Cassie’s a big shot’s
kid makes it even tastier, from that standpoint. And these sudden
shifts she’s making-Munchausen one day, pancreatic disease the next,
then back to Munchausen. Doesn’t that have a hysterical feeling to
it?
Your goddam waltz?”
I digested all that.
“Maybe there’s a reason the kid goes nuts when she sees her, Alex.”
“But the same logic that applies to Vicki applies to her,” I said.
“Until this last seizure, all of Cassie’s problems began at home. How
could Stephanie have been involved?”
“Has she ever been out to the home?”
“Just early on-once or twice, setting up the sleep monitor.”
“Okay, what about this? The first problems the kid had were real-the
croup, or whatever. Steph treated them and found out being doctor to
the chairman of the board’s grandchild was a kick.
Power trip-you yourself said she plans on being head of the
department.”
“If that was her goal, curing Cassie would have made her look a lot
better.”
“The parents haven’t dropped her yet, have they?”
“No. They think she’s great.”
“There you go. She gets them to depend on her, and tinkers with
Cassie-best of both worlds. And you yourself told me Cassie gets sick
soon after appointments. What if that’s because Stephanie’s doing
something to her-dosing her up during a checkup and sending her home
like a medical time bomb?”
“What could she have done with Cindy right there in the exam room?”
“How do you know she was there?”
“Because she never leaves Cassie’s side. And some of those medical
visits were with other doctors specialists, not Stephanie.”
“Do you know for a fact that Stephanie didn’t also see the kid the same
day the specialists did?”
“No. I guess I could look at the outpatient chart and find out.”
“If she even charted it. It could have been something subtlechecking
the kid’s throat and the tongue depressor’s coated with something.
Whatever, it’s something to consider, right?”
“Doctor sends baby home with more than a lollipop? That’s pretty
obscene.”
Any worse than a mother poisoning her own child? The other thing you
might want to think of, in terms of her motivation, is revenge: She
hates Grandpa because of what he’s doing to the hospital, so she gets
to him through Cassie.”
“Sounds like you’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”
“Evil mind, Alex. They used to pay me for it. Actually, what got me