“Sam, I’d love to help, but I can’t. Not while I’m treating Chaney’s sister.”
He seemed to find my refusal amusing. “Not you, asshole. I’m looking for a real doctor. I was thinking one of Chaney’s doctors might help. I was going to approach them tonight when things calmed down at the hospital.”
I didn’t think it was wise to get them mixed up in this during an acute medical crisis. I suggested an alternative. “What about Adrienne? You know, my urologist friend? She treated Merritt. She knows the family, the whole situation. I bet she’d love to do it. And Adrienne’s as Machiavellian as they come.”
“She’s dating Maitlin, isn’t she?”
I wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to answer that question. “Kind of,” I said.
Sam was smiling. “You know, it’s not a bad idea. She’s relentless. She’s smart. I’d like to have a ticket to that meeting. Maybe she’d record it for me, you think?”
I stared across the street at Dr. Gusman’s front door and wondered whose idea it had been to paint it the color of cantaloupe flesh. “Sam, it’s possible that Robilio had nothing to do with any of this, isn’t it?”
“You mean that he was an innocent bystander?”
“I guess.”
“That health insurance policy he’s selling to the masses is like a car with a busted airbag. Works fine except in the most dire of emergencies. I wouldn’t exactly call him innocent.”
“But I mean, in terms of the refusal to grant the procedure for Chaney? You’re thinking that Gusman engineered that, not Robilio?”
“Looks that way. But Robilio could’ve overruled the medical board. I checked. He’s a physician, too. And he ran the company like an ayatollah. He could’ve approved it if he wanted to.”
“This changes things. Makes me wonder about other things I haven’t given much thought to.”
“Yeah? Such as?”
I said, “That day, before the hockey game, at his house. How confused everybody was. You know, Scott Truscott said the scene was a puzzle, so did Mitchell Crest. You’ve been perplexed, too. And the note we found on the computer? I haven’t thought about it much since we found the bloody clothes in Merritt’s room.”
“I think I hear the rustling sounds of someone digging around for that other french fry.”
“Is there any way you can get me a copy of Dead Ed’s suicide note? And a copy of the post?”
He laughed deeply. “Now you’re thinking. You know, I was wondering when you were going to actually begin to act intelligent about all this. Maybe the time has come. I hope so.”
“Well, when can I see the note? And the autopsy?”
“The autopsy report won’t be done for a few weeks. But I have a copy of Malloy’s notes from his meeting with the coroner. I think they’re in the backseat somewhere. While I’m looking for them, why don’t you see if you can track down your conspiratorial little urologist friend for me. Go ahead, use my phone.”
Thirty-two
Sam parked his car in the same fire zone spot in front of the main entrance to the hospital. He was still on the phone with Adrienne.
I wasn’t quite done reading the loose sheets of paper he had given me. From what I could discern from eavesdropping on their conversation, they were role-playing what Adrienne was going to say to the powers at MedExcel to blackmail them into transporting Chaney to Seattle by, let’s say, tomorrow morning. Sam offered Adrienne a few juicy tidbits from his investigation that she could use as sweeteners if they were needed in her argument.
I suspected they wouldn’t be needed. A few minutes earlier, when I had reached Adrienne on Sam’s phone and told her what was up, she was an eager volunteer. She’d made it clear that her strategy would be to plot a devastating ambush on MedExcel, not engage them in a protracted battle. She would be attacking this surgically, as though it were a particularly aggressive bladder cancer.
The notes that I was reading had been taken by the lead detective, Scott Malloy, during an informal interview with Boulder’s coroner, a forensic pathologist. I knew from experience that the findings were preliminary.
Edward Robilio had undiagnosed coronary artery disease and an enlarged prostate. He had multiple polyps in his large intestine and an ingrown toenail on his left foot that was so inflamed it must have made his last few walks around the block pretty painful.
What killed him-the cause of death-were two gunshot wounds, the first “of chest” that missed his heart and major vessels, but clipped his lung and chipped some bone in the spinal column. The wound was, according to the coroner’s assessment, of “vital reaction,” likely a slow but persistent bleeder. In the coroner’s opinion, without competent and timely emergency care, that first wound alone would have eventually been fatal to Dr. Robilio.
The second gunshot wound was “of head,” specifically, a bullet entered Ed’s face just left of his nose and exited, along with a chunk of skull the size of an apricot, behind his left ear. This shot clipped major vessels, turned gray matter into jello and was fatal within minutes.
No surprises.
A copy of the death certificate was stapled to Malloy’s notes. I searched for the coroner’s opinion on manner of death. This category is not the “why” of dying-that’s cause of death. Manner of death is about motivation or intent. Manner of death is the “how” of dying-whether by suicide, homicide, accident, or disease. And with this death certificate on Dr. Robilio, the Boulder coroner was telling his undoubtedly unhappy compatriots in the police department and district attorney’s office that the manner of death on this one was still too close to call. The words were, “Pending further investigation.”
The coroner could rule out accident. He could rule out disease. He could even rule out act of God. But he couldn’t rule out either suicide or homicide. Those manners of death were still on the table.
Malloy’s notes were comprehensive. The gunshots had both been fired from close range, estimated at one to three inches, consistent with suicide, and at angles not inconsistent with either suicide or homicide. Gunshot residue and trace metal detection tests were positive for the victim’s shirt, face, torso, hair, and shoulders. But the victim’s right hand-Dead Ed was right-handed-was so drenched by his own blood that the tests done on it for trace metals were inconclusive. Dr. Robilio’s wounds may have been self-inflicted; there was nothing to indicate he wasn’t holding the gun.
And from a forensic pathology perspective there was nothing to indicate that he was holding the gun.
The coroner raised two other points that Malloy labeled “subjective impressions.” The first was that the deceased may have been so debilitated by the first wound that he would have been physically incapable of firing the second shot, which would indicate homicide, not suicide. And second, psychological data from coroner’s assistant interviews with family and business associates provided no prodromal signs of acute depression or presuicidal activity other than the typed suicide note.
The second document that Sam gave me complicated everything I had just read. It was that typed suicide note, printed out from Ed Robilio’s tiny computer. The note was addressed to no one and was oddly formal in tone. The structure reminded me of a business memo. The note asked that Beth be thanked for her partnership and for bearing their beautiful children. The note expressed sorrow for what Robilio had done and what he hadn’t done. It left instructions on where to find some financial documents that Beth might need.