“Do you think he may be covering for someone else?”
“Don't know… I don't know. All I know for sure is that I can't trust him.”
Randy Oglesby, rumbling down the stairwell two steps at a time, shouted, “I need to see you, Dr. Sanger!”
She turned, and with Lucas following, they went to Meredyth's office.
“Do you think it's wise talking here?” asked Lucas, signaling the open window they had found earlier.
“Come on,” she said, leading them into the ladies' room.
There Randy, gulping on air, said, “About the three names I gave you.”
“Yes, what is it?”
“All three went to Texas Christian University.”
“Ahh, odd coincidence?” suggested Lucas.
“Just like Mootry, Little, and Palmer at one time or another,” Randy shot back.
“You're kidding?”
“The web is woven tight,” replied Lucas.
“Damned tight,” agreed Randy. “I'm getting so I don't trust anybody, and I do mean anybody… And the deeper I get in, the more paranoid I'm getting. Meanwhile, my personal life is a wreck. You wouldn't believe what I've done to my good name. My life's… well, I'm living a lie.”
“Living a lie?” she asked.
Lucas looked knowingly across at her.
“I told Darlene that I'm, well, that my name's James Pardee, that I'm a homicide detective with the HPD, and she believed it, and it all started when I went to fetch those crystal goblets you had examined. Darlene works for the lab. Oh, and I had the goblets locked up in a safe deposit box.” He surreptitiously handed the key over to Lucas.
Lucas laughed helplessly and Meredyth joined him, all the while apologizing for laughing at Randy's predicament. Stuttering and stumbling for the words, she told Randy, “You have no idea what we were thinking your big, bad secret might be.”
He only looked perplexed. “Nothing could be worse than this…”
Again Meredyth and Lucas laughed.
Armed now with additional information supplied by Randy Oglesby, Meredyth and Lucas drove across town. They decided to pay a visit to each of the three people on the list supplied them by Randy's computer hacking. They first went to see Mootry's lawyer, Pierce Dalton. The man seemed to have everything a lawyer could find of value: opulent offices, the most expensive suit money could buy, a bevy of secretaries, each more fashionable and gorgeous than the next. He was the head of his own firm, and he handled trial cases for the defense as well as corporate and personal finances, if you could afford him. Apparently, he was extremely successful, which meant there must be many a man walking the streets in his debt, both financially and otherwise.
Dalton was as straightforward as he was tall, telling them that he had already talked to the cops on several occasions and had opened Judge Mootry's books for them.
“Detectives Pardee and Amelford, you mean?” asked Meredyth.
“Yeah, that's them. Apparently, they're some steps ahead of you two.”
“Did you see the judge the night of his death?” asked Lucas.
“As I told the other detectives, I was booked on a flight that night to San Diego. You can check it out if you like.”
“Then you didn't have a drink with him that night?”
“No, I hadn't seen the old gentleman for several days.” Dalton was cool, unperturbed.
“We learned recently that you and the judge went back a long way, back to college days, actually, Texas Christian,” Meredyth said like a well-mannered snake, striking with aplomb.
“That's right. That's why the judge trusted me.”
“You're so much younger than he was, yet you were at the university together, same fraternity.”
“I was a boy wonder. Graduated from high school at eleven. I was much younger than everyone in my fraternity.”
Lucas asked. “Then you're classified a genius?”
“Only by those who need classification and labels.”
They said their good-byes. Once outside, Meredyth said, “He didn't give away a thing. I couldn't read him.”
“He gave away one thing.”
“What's that?”
“He was too damned cool.”
“Personally, I find most genius-types that way. I don't know if there's anything there.”
“Let's go see Dr. Washburn. See if he's as unflappable as Dalton.
” They next ran down Dr. Sterling Washburn at Mercy General Hospital, Houston, half a city away from Dalton's downtown offices. The hospital was in a run-down section of the city, and it appeared to have remained open in order to serve the needy in the dilapidated area in which it was located. Meredyth explained that once it was a very pleasant, upscale neighborhood but gang violence and a series of economic downturns had created a little war zone within the city, and the hospital found itself at the core of the battlefield.
“This Sterling Washburn has to be dedicated to work here,” she said in Lucas's ear as they waited. Sterling was being paged, as he was not in his office.
In a moment, a woman in a white coat stepped up to them. “Officer Stonecoat, Dr. Sanger, I presume?” she said.
“We've been waiting twenty minutes to see Dr. Wash-burn,” fumed Lucas. “Is he or is he not in?”
“I am Dr. Sterling Washburn. How can I help you?”
“You?” asked Lucas, surprised, but pleasantly, staring at the lovely green-eyed, raven-haired woman. “I mean, your specialty is?”
Meredyth wanted to both hit him and apologize for him, but she held her tongue instead. She introduced Lucas and herself to the doctor.
“My specialty is heart surgery. I have a private practice, which is lucrative, and I give as much time as possible to the hospital here,” she answered Lucas's question and then some. “How may I be of assistance to you?”
Meredyth jumped in. “We understand you were Judge Charles Mootry's physician?”
“I had that dubious pleasure, yes.”
“Dubious, you say?”
“Charles hardly took my advice, but he and I enjoyed a long friendship, and his health was deteriorating along with his mind. Toward the end, he thought he could put his hands all over me… It was, or had become, a distinctly uncomfortable position for me, but I owed him a great deal.”
“You owed him? Money, you mean?”
“He supported me through school. He was quite the gentleman about it, until recently, as I've said. It started with cute little old man gestures and remarks but had escalated to, 'You owe me, this, Sterling.'“
“And did you feel obligated to him?”
“I did, of course…”
Lucas asked, “Since Texas Christian days?”
“I wasn't a full-time student there; I was just picking up some credits, still in high school at the time. I went to Tulane in New Orleans. Charles made it possible. I knew I wanted to be a physician, and I wanted a head start. Charles… Charles encouraged me, became a big brother to me. He supported me, as I said and as I've told others. There was never any secret about our relationship. I did love Charles, just not what he'd become.”
“So, your friendship began with a monetary favor?”
“No, no… We met at a mutual friend's party. It wasn't until years later, when he heard about my situation, that he came to me with the idea of helping me out.”
“And you returned the favor over the years by seeing to his medical needs?” asked Lucas.
“Yes, you could say that, although he and I were more like brother and sister than… than patient and doctor. He seldom listened to my directions, but he wouldn't pay another doctor, he always said. He was a… a funny man, a wonderful man.”
“Were you seeing to his pill supply, doctor?” Meredyth asked.
She looked around to be certain no one was listening. “I was… But I only supplied him with what he needed to stay sharp. That's all.”
Lucas replied, “You must have been devastated to learn of his death.”
“I was. I had just left him hours before,” she said. “I feared he might've overdosed when I first heard the news he was dead. Then, as it turns out, he was… murdered. I could hardly believe it. But when I spoke to the police, I told them who I suspected and why.”