The Medical Murder Mystery Ch. 05

"Okay, so tell us what you did, from the beginning..."

Part 23 - Solution

Santo Veccio's new restaurant did not really have a 'back room', but he put together a catered spread for us that was a Feast for the Gods, and delivered it to the Junction Station Depot, which retired Chief Griswold rented for us. It was the evening of Friday, January 9th. Dr. Richard Searles had helped pay for all the food, but wanted it kept anonymous. He would have to work harder than he did if he wanted to keep my mother from finding out, but she and I kept the secret.

Present at the celebration were me, Laura, Sheriff Daniel and Melina Allgood with their new baby, Chief Griswold and his wife, Cindy Ross and Jenna Stiles, Paulina Patterson (surprisingly alone, her husband had some other business to attend to), Franklin Washington and his wife Susie, Martin Nash and Sandra Speer, Diana Torres (alone), Tanya Perlman (alone), Myron and Mary, Sonali, Lainie, Christopher Purvis and Julie Newton of Vice. Teresa Croyle had made regrets, citing other business, as well.

And then came Jack Muscone with the two DEA agents who had been working on the prescription drug case. Jack said that they'd gotten some good stuff: the FBI and DEA agents had gone to Wicker's home and found the cellphone, and app on it, that was transmitting his ankle monitor signal, which had allowed Wicker to leave undetected the night before. That was bad, but they were getting some further leads due to some knowledge of who might be creating such apps.

"Any ideas who killed Wicker?" asked the new Sheriff in Town.

"Not yet, sir." I said. I had already told Jack about the motorcyclist in the video, and had admonished those who had been in the room to please not discuss it even with other police officers and ADAs and the like.

Finally, everyone was complaining that they had eaten so much that they could not move, and there was still food available.

"Okay, Commander," said Cindy after tapping her water glass with her spoon to get everyone settled down. "It's my favorite part of the evening, asking you to tell us how you did it. And Chief Griswold will say I'm kissing your ass when I tell you that this might be your best one yet. I still am not sure how you did it, and you were telling me every step of the way... contrary to past cases." That last part was to needle me, and it got Cindy a 'friendly' glare back.

"Nice job of kissing the boss's ass, Cindy." piped up Chief Griswold, his cheeks rosy. Everyone laughed loud and hard at that.

"I have to say that I agree with Miss Ross." said Daniel Allgood. "It was absolutely brilliant. So, how did you get there?" Everyone got quiet as I got started with my story.

"The chain of events was not particularly hard to put together," I said, "though I did have some luck in observing an altercation at the Wellman's party, and Lt. Ross here had reported on another altercation at Veccio's Ristorante. The problem, Sheriff, and everyone else, was getting a case to give to the D.A.'s office that they could spoon-feed to a Jury and get a solid conviction. Darla made it easy with her full confession, as killing Gloria Searles was weighing on her conscience, but I think we had the case anyway."

"So what was that chain of events?" asked Cindy, ever the impatient one.

"Okay, here goes. I'll tell it chronologically as much as possible." I said. "Many years ago, John D. Clifford went into the hospital for a procedure, which was botched. He couldn't have children anymore. When he met his future wife Darla, he told her the situation, so she knew about it going in. She thought she could handle it and everything would be okay, but over time she found that while her husband could have sex, his desire for it and his, shall we say, 'ability to perform' was not up to her needs.

"Darla was beautiful and she was athletic and healthy, and she craved more sex. She began having affairs with other men, and an especially hot one with a rogue, nearly bogus doctor, Paul Wicker. Wicker was having affairs with several of the County's trophy wives, and to that end this becomes a delicate case vis-a-vis public consumption, but I digress."

"Darla was smart as well as careful. She left her cellphone at home, so that the pings would not be detected anywhere but near her home. She created a whole new identity, that of 'Natasha Norelle'. She used burner phones, as did her lover Wicker, and she used birth control pills. But she had to hide those pills from her husband. Darla had a good, comfortable life, and if her husband found out about her affairs and divorced her, she'd have to go back to work at the least, and she wouldn't have the smooth and easy life she'd created for herself.

"So now we come up to last November. Darla's husband hated doctors, but she needed to have checkups now and again. She went to Dr. Gloria Searles, complaining of not feeling well. Dr. Searles, who I'll call 'Gloria' to prevent confusion with her husband, noted she had a bruise on her leg but did not find any other symptoms... until the blood tests came back. Gloria tried to contact Darla, but never got a reply back. But what Darla did not know was that Gloria was doing research on what was ailing Darla.

"Darla had been going to Abel Fillmore to get her birth control pills in bulk. He had a supplier in Mexico, but that got interdicted by the FBI and the supply stopped. So Darla had to go to Wicker's next pharmacist, Lockhart of Smith-Morra Pharmacy. Lockhart was a real sleazebag and a lecherous guy. Lockhart may have come on to her when she went to Smith-Morra, and Natasha did use a bit of makeup and a wig to disguise herself when she went to pick up her birth control pills. More on that later.

"So what happened was that Lockhart's supply of birth control was not as good a quality as Abel Fillmore's, and it was a different dosage. Darla apparently had a reaction to the new birth control pills." I saw Melina wince, and I knew what she was thinking about and feeling, but I moved on with my story.

"So, we now come up to last weekend." I continued. "John and Darla Clifford go to Veccio's new restaurant, and as Darla is going to the restroom, who comes out of the mens' room but Lockhart. He recognized her even though she was disguised at his pharmacy. She brushed past him and went into the restroom to try to wait him out." I saw the light come on in some people's eyes. Cindy and Joanne had started catching on almost immediately, but Jack Muscone and the DEA agents were still sitting in stupefied wonder.

I went on: "There is an old unwritten rule that if a prostitute sees one of her clients out on the streets, she will not acknowledge or greet him unless he greets her first. Well, Lockhart was a total asshole as well as a total idiot. He stands there and waits for Darla to come out of the restroom, accosts her to the point of grabbing her arm when she does come out, and her husband does what any good husband would do: he goes up and is about to whip Lockhart's ass. If it had been me and he'd grabbed my wife, Lockhart would've had seriously broken bones, and I don't mind saying that in front of any of you."

"Ask Steven Ikea what happens when the Iron Crowbar's family gets accosted." said the not-fully-sober Chief Griswold, remembering that day at Ward Harvester. After some murmurings of agreement, I took up my narrative again.

"Anyway, Lieutenant Ross happened to be there and broke it up, but it was a horrible faux pas by the jerk Lockhart. The incident might have faded into history, but it had a very important side effect: it caused Darla to become scared that her double life was going to be found out, and indeed her husband asked a lot of questions and became suspicious.

"So Darla has her next appointment with Gloria Searles, and she still has a bruise on her leg. She did not get it from hitting anything, and in truth the bruising was old and had not really healed at all. Gloria noticed, began inquiring about it with Darla... and with newfound knowledge from two months of research, she began asking about Darla using birth control. Darla wouldn't answer; in fact, she got up and bolted for the door, fully terrified that her secret was coming out.

"Now I happen to have a very reliable and confidential source in the University Psychology Department," I said, looking at my lovely wife and grinning, "who happens to also be a medical doctor with specialization in gynecology. My wife told me that a change of dosage in birth control pills can cause an allergic reaction to them, which includes easy bruising. Darla's bruising was not from an injury, but from an allergic reaction to the bad batch of birth control pills provided by Lockhart.

"Next comes last Monday night's party at Dr. Wellman's home, at which I was fortunate to be present and to observe what happened." I said. "Gloria Searles sees Darla Clifford and tries to talk to her. Darla won't talk to her, so Gloria goes to John Clifford to try to get him to get Darla to talk with her. Now Gloria thinks she's doing the right thing: she's very worried about Darla's health if Darla keeps taking these bad birth control pills. But Gloria did not know the history of John and Darla Clifford. And when Darla saw Gloria talking to John, she freaked... kind of a seeing her life flash before her eyes, as she called it during her confession.

"Turns out that Gloria did not tell John specifically about birth control pills, and that might have sealed her fate. If she had told John, the cat would've been out of the bag, and there'd be no point in trying to silence Gloria. However, Gloria had not told John the details, and Darla thought she had to take the chance to eliminate Gloria to keep John from finding out. In her warped, nearly-mad mind, that was her thinking. And so she murdered Gloria in cold blood."

That got the room buzzing. A ton of questions were hurled at me, including "How did Darla get into the office?" and "How did she know Gloria was at the office?" and "Did she kill Lockhart, too?" I let the buzz continue until Sheriff Allgood regained control.

"Okay, guys, let the Commander talk!" he ordered. "Don, keep going."

I resumed. "We now know that John Clifford lied, his wife was not at home all that night. She snuck out in the early morning hours, leaving her cellphone at home, and went to the Searles home. She intended to break in and kill Gloria at home as soon as Richard Searles left for the hospital. However, she saw that Gloria came out of the house immediately after her husband left, and drove to her office. Gloria was working hard on this situation, she was not going to let it go, and Darla realized that.

"Darla was prepared to get into the office, and I'll get into that in a minute, but suffice it to say that Darla followed Gloria into the office, came up to Gloria as Gloria was getting into a filing cabinet behind her desk, and shot Gloria before Gloria even knew Darla was there. Darla then went to the pile of file folders on the side table, found her own, which had the effect of making two small piles from one larger pile, tore out the notes Gloria had made about Darla's case the day before, then took the interesting step of re-filing her own file in the cabinets rather than putting it back in the pile."

"Why did she do that?" asked one of the DEA agents, drawing some stares for interrupting me, including from myself. Jack Muscone leaned over and whispered something to the agent.

"I asked her that." I said. "She said that she did not realize her name was in the computer's appointment calendar, and she thought by putting away her file she would avoid detection as having been there, at least for a while. As it turned out, it became a discrepancy and had her in my sights rather quickly."

"So let me quickly get to how Darla got in, and such." I said. "I have my suspicions about Jill, the receptionist. She was not cooperative, she invoked, and she was well coached on what to say and how to say it in invoking. How did Darla know where her file was after shooting Gloria? Maybe she saw files on the table and happened to look? I do have an idea that before the incident at the Wellman's, Darla had intended to steal her own file from the office, and enlisted Jill's help, with the inducements of green dollar bills, to make arrangements to do that. But then things got out of hand."

"As to how Darla got into the medical offices?" I asked. "There is indeed a flaw in the security system, but very very few people know about it. Either Darla or Jill was given that knowledge, and it was then used."

"How do you know there's a flaw in the security system?" asked one of the DEA agents. That got Jack Muscone leaning over and whispering to him, then Jack told me to go ahead with my story.

I continued: "So I think it was Jill because Darla didn't have very much time to acquire the information from Paul Wicker or Lockhart or anyone else, but Jill could've told her, especially if they'd had prior arrangements."

I continued: "Anyway, Darla, actually in her role as 'Natasha Norelle', was later arrested trying to leave though the back door of Paul Wicker's offices. And at this point the Federal drug case was opened up. But there was a side issue, the murder of the pharmacist Lockhart."

"This is what really takes the cake for me." Cindy said. "How in the world did you see that one?"

"I am going to get a solid blue-crowbar beatdown for this one." I admitted. "I guessed."

That got the room buzzing for a minute, then everyone settled down as they realized I didn't really just guess. Chief Griswold was smiling very merrily.

"Well, it was an extremely educated guess." I said. "Clifford had motive, means and opportunity. He had a fight with his wife, where he was cursing Lockhart's name from the get-go, and she said he was thinking out loud about whipping Lockhart again. But it was more... Clifford had by now figured out about his wife's infidelities and wanted to know the full story, so he was going to force it out of Lockhart."

I continued: "And that is what he did: he checked himself into the University Hotel, which I think he knew had some security camera issues. I have an idle theory that he's been looking into Police Department files through his University computer, which some of the lawyers there do have access to do through the University Police. He may or may not have known about the University Hotel cameras, whose problems we came across in the 'Murdered Bride' case."

"Ahhhh..." Martin Nash said, catching on.

"Yes." I replied. "My last piece of evidence, which might not hold up in a Court trial but was good enough for me personally, was the picture recovered from the Smith-Morra cameras. Clifford wore a ski mask, but his beard and mustache made the lower part of the mask bulge to the point I could surmise there was a beard underneath."

"So, I was on fairly solid circumstantial ground that it was Clifford, and I only needed to acquire evidence or some eyewitness testimony from Darla to reel him in. To continue with the story: Clifford snuck out of the Hotel and got Lockhart to come down to the pharmacy, which I am embarrassed to admit that our officers on the scene did not catch-"

"Question!" said one of the DEA agents. "How did he know how to get in touch with Lockhart." More reproving looks his way, but I rescued him this time:

"Excellent question." I said. "Right now, that's a blind spot for me, though I can formulate some theories. I seriously doubt Darla would've told him, but he must've somehow acquired information leading to Lockhart's burner phone number. Let me leave that for a moment and just say that he did get Lockhart back to the pharmacy, but Lockhart may not have given up Natasha Norelle's information. Clifford killed him, then looked up anyone in the database named 'Natasha', finding Norelle. John Clifford was pretty good with computers, which is why I suspect it was him that accessed police files through the University's networks. I'll be talking with Myron and the I.T. Department about improving security there."

"Anyway," I said, to finish up, "Clifford found Natasha Norelle's file, and he left that up on the computer screen as he left. We found it when we found the pharmacist's body. You FBI and DEA guys will be going through all that, and I look forward to your successful pursuits in those arenas, especially the smuggling aspects of it."

Part 24 - Epilogue

As everyone prepared to go home, I approached Daniel and Melina. "Could you take Laura and Jenna home for me?" I said. "Cindy and I are going to drive Chief Griswold and his wife home, then I'll give Cindy a ride home." They agreed.

I drove the Chief's car with himself and his wife inside, while Cindy drove my SUV behind me. "He's an Italian man and feasted and drank like one tonight." his wife said, somewhat apologetically.

"He's earned it." I said. I helped Griswold inside and settled comfortably on the sofa, where his wife put blankets over him. Then I left.

"I take it you want to talk to me." said Cindy. "Any officer could've driven the Chief home."

"True enough." I said. "This is a Crowbar-only discussion. What did you think of this case?"

"You did leave some gaps in your explanation." Cindy said. "Intentionally?"

"What gaps would those be?" I asked.

"Clifford getting all his info, for one thing." Cindy said. "Darla and Jill and the how and why of what they did."

"Good." I said. "Yes, I'm either paranoid, or I'm seeing a thin thread running through this case... and 'Eightfold Fence' thread, if you get my meaning."

"Yeah, I do, I see what you mean." Cindy said, thinking about it. "So does this help you against the 'real Moriarty'?"

"You tell me." I said, getting Cindy to think. We might have been going around the Bypass loop three times by now...

"Let's see." Cindy said. "Didn't see much of Seth nor Todd, nor Bonnie Karpathian, for that matter. You're gonna have to convince me about Sheriff Allgood. As to Councilman Lewis, this drug ring was primarily in his district, and a politician like him gets his cut in things like this."

"True." I said.

"As to Dr. Wellman," Cindy said, "this affected one of his professors and the big-name cardiologist at his University Hospital. And Pastor Westboro visited Clifford at the University Hotel. But you verified that, which has me eliminating Westboro."

"Why is that?" I asked, very happy to be hearing Cindy say that.

"Because you went to visit him alone." Cindy said. "Not only is that generally a breach of police protocol requiring having a partner or second person at all times to cover you whenever possible; but I would venture to say that if you thought he was the real deal guy, it would be exceptionally dangerous for you to go see him alone at any time at all. Ergo, you must not think it's him, or you would not have gone to see him alone, no matter what."

"Excellent!" I said. "Very good reasoning on your part. Not totally enough to eliminate him, but very good thinking. Now what was that theory about Dr. Wellman?"

"He tends to get weak in the knees when his harmony is disturbed vis-a-vis his University." Cindy replied. "He gets nervous whenever you're around on police business, even though your wife is one of his favorite professors and favorite people. Your mom told me that last bit, by the way, so don't credit me with the observation. Anyway, this case affected Dr. Searles, who is a really esteemed name, and it also affected one of his law professors, who won't be there any longer, of course. I can see him giving Clifford and/or Darla the information needed to hopefully make these problems for him go away, or at least be diverted from the University... which is what happened, of course."