One thing set Katie apart. She had claimed, to her friends, that she had been a patient of Dr. D. Welles D' Anton. For a young woman who had been living one step above the streets, this was, to say the least, unusual.
There were no more details in the police report. It was only noted that D' Anton's office had been contacted, in the hopes that they might have a current address for her. They did not. That was that.
Franchi was right – the case went nowhere, and it was several years old. Most likely, Katie had lied about her connection with D' Anton to impress her friends, and just skipped town.
But if not, she was another young woman whose unexplained death was linked to D' Anton.
The police report did mention the name of a nurse in D' Anton's office, one Margaret Pendergast. Tracking her was no problem. Ms. Pendergast was an upstanding citizen, at least on paper. She had bought a house in Anaheim in early 1998.
Which meant that she had left D' Anton's employ not long after Katie Benson's disappearance.
Larrabee found her phone number, but got no answer. He left a message on her machine, then started focusing on Dr. D. Welles D'Anton himself.
The standard background check information on D'Anton came up readily, including his license to practice in the state of California. But Larrabee realized that none of it dated back farther than twenty years. This was astonishing: his medical education should have been a matter of public record.
Larrabee started to entertain the incredible notion that D'Anton might be a fraud. He accessed a CD-ROM directory of board-certified medical specialists and looked again, scrolling carefully down the list of names.
His finger stopped tapping the key. He grinned.
The credentials were impressive – M.D. from Johns Hopkins, surgical residency at UCLA, back to Hopkins for plastic surgery certification -
But they were for one Donald W. Danton. Born in Youngstown, Ohio, November 3, 1952. Married Julia Symes in 1983. The dates jibed with a man of fifty. It had to be him.
The usual reasons for a name change were obvious – a criminal record, bad debts, adopting a stage persona. But this apostrophe had turned him from Donald Danton of Youngstown, Ohio, to Dr. D. Welles D'Anton of San Francisco, plastic surgeon to the stars.
Next, Larrabee found that the name Symes was old California money, with plenty of alumni from Stanford and USC. The LA branch of the family included several financiers and producers in the movie business. Julia Symes, D'Anton's wife, was from San Francisco but had gone to college at Pomona. She would have been an undergraduate there at the time Danton – now D'Anton – was doing his surgical residency at UCLA. They had married the year she graduated.
Larrabee was getting the feeling that D'Anton had orchestrated his career very carefully – acquiring the proper medical credentials, a wealthy wife who was connected in the film world, and a new name and persona.
A quick online search turned up no allegations of malpractice or negligence against D'Anton, with the apostrophe or without. But very often, cases didn't show up on those kinds of records because they never got that far. A physician who was threatened with a lawsuit, or a misconduct complaint, would inform his or her insurance company immediately. The company's attorneys might then persuade the complainant not to pursue it, or an agreement would be reached privately. There would be no official record of the matter.
Larrabee had put out feelers for several other avenues that might turn up these kinds of incidents. The personnel at ASCLEP, the malpractice insurance company that he and Monks worked for, might have heard about them – or other physicians, lawyers, and newspeople, of whom Larrabee knew quite a few.
But the best bet was D'Anton's own insurance company, Pacific Doctors Mutual. If any complaints had ever been lodged against him, they would be in the files. But those were highly confidential, jealously guarded from outsiders.
Hacking was beyond his level of skill. But he knew just the person for the job, Tina Bauer. He called Tina and spoke with her briefly, arranging to stop by her apartment. The day had already been a long one, with the drive to Sacramento and back. But this was business that needed taking care of.
Larrabee locked up and walked through the old building's hall, ears attentive to familiar sounds, alert for possible intruders. It was zoned for commercial use only; legally, he was not supposed to be living there. But the owners were glad to have their own private security force and looked the other way. The building housed another dozen offices, mainly small shipping companies and wholesalers. It was a throwback to an older era, like a stage set of musty offices and aging personnel moving slowly in their little enclaves, oblivious to the frenzied digitized world outside their doors. By this time of evening it was deserted.
It was after eight and getting dark when he walked outside. He liked the night, and he always felt better when he got out on the street. The San Francisco sky was a shade of midnight blue he had never seen anywhere else, and the great buildings of the skyline glimmered with elegance and power. There was no place like it. Where he had grown up – Flint, Michigan – seemed like another planet. His name, Stover, came from his mother's maiden name of Stoverud, Norwegian loggers and farmers. His father had worked the assembly lines in Flint, until that bitter closing had cost the town the little it had. By the time Stover was twenty, there was not much else to do but leave.
Traffic this evening was relaxed; rush hour was over and the Giants were playing out of town. A few human shapes carrying garbage bags or pushing shopping carts were moving, with the deliberateness of having no destination. There were a lot of street people in the neighborhood, down toward the east end of Howard Street. Pac Bell Park, new and splendid, was a fine addition to the city. But the surrounding gentrification, blocks and blocks of upscale condo and office buildings, had pushed the homeless toward the older areas. Larrabee knew the ones who had been around a while and always kept a sheaf of folded dollar bills in his pocket to hand out when he met them. This maintained a respect for him and his property, and even a sort of loyalty between him and those denizens of a world that was like a halfway house to death.
But there were always newcomers, drugged to craziness or just not giving a shit. Confrontations were still rare, and the few times that violence had seemed likely, he had been able to head it off by opening his jacket to show his pistol. But the probability kept looming larger that a gang member with his own gun, or a junkie pulling a knife out of nowhere, was going to catch him unprepared. It was a no-win situation – if he defended himself successfully, he was probably in serious trouble with the law, and if not, he was dead – and while he hated to give in, he was thinking about moving. Growing up, he had hated the grimy industrial buildings that surrounded him, and wanted only to get away. But now they brought a strange comfort.
He got in his Taurus, pulled out onto Howard, and headed toward Castro Street. This was where he had started as a rookie cop, in the Southern District south of Market Street, flanking the Mission. In this heat, there were a lot of people out – a little world on each street corner and several in between, interacting and clashing, hookers, gangbangers, drunks, addicts, the halt and lame and many insane: a microcosm of predators and victims.
Larrabee had spent more than ten years wearing the SFPD's blue uniform, and another year and a half under cover. One night he had shot a particularly vicious mugger who was preying on tourists near Fisherman's Wharf. But it was dark; the mugger had managed to ditch his pistol so that it was never found; and his defense lawyer successfully argued reasonable doubt that Larrabee had shot the right man. He had been suspended without pay. He might have been reinstated eventually, but the beating he had taken at the hands of the system that he had risked his life to protect left him bitter and disgusted. Instead, he had decided to go private.