The Prodigy Part 16

"It's a complete cliche. I was a psychiatric nurse at Silver Glenn. He was rounding on patients, and his wife had died, and ... the rest was a rather short but sweet time." She looked down at an over-stuffed Queen Anne wing chair she'd excavated from a pile of clothing. Her shoulders sagged, she looked at Barrett. "I thought it was cute at first, the way he liked to bring me gifts. I told him it wasn't necessary, but he liked doing it. It got to the point where I had to be careful when we walked down the street, because if there was something in a shop window that I admired, the next thing you know his credit card would be out, and nothing I could say would stop him."

"This has something to do with Jimmy Martin?" Barrett asked, wondering how she could gently reel in Sheila's reminiscence.

"Everything to do with it. Morris had a very good practice. His patients loved him. It's not like we needed more money, at least I didn't."

"What changed?"

"This," she said. "I guess I wasn't clear. What a surprise, I hardly make sense to myself anymore, I can't imagine what it must be like for someone else. This apartment. Do you have any idea what eight rooms in this building go for?"

"No clue," Barrett cut Ed a look.

"I didn't know until he ... died ... just how much. It's obscene. That's why he was so excited when he got the job through the clinic."

"Do you know who contacted him?" Barrett asked.

"I do, come to think of it. It was an Anton somebody."

"Anton Fielding," Barrett said.

"That's right, Morris had been his supervisor years ago when Anton was a resident. I guess that he thought that Morris would be a good match. It is a little odd though."

"What is?"

"As far as I know that's the only forensic client that Morris had. I wonder why ... I guess now it doesn't matter." Sheila finally sat-she looked across at Barrett and Hobbs, her expression troubled. "There's something I don't know, isn't there?"

"Some things don't add up," Barrett admitted. "I'm seeing Jimmy Martin now, and there were some irregularities I'm trying to resolve."

"That involved Morris?"

"Maybe. I mean you were ... are ... a psychiatric nurse. What would you think of someone who was on lithium and didn't have their level checked?"

"Either ignorance or incompetence."

"Right. Did your husband have many patients on medication?"

"Who doesn't? And when I worked with him at Silver Glenn you know all of those patients were on a truckload of pills."

"Was he thorough? Would he check levels and do all of that?"

"Of course. Why? What are you getting at?"

"Jimmy Martin was on lithium and your husband never checked his level."

"That doesn't make sense," Sheila said. "Are you sure?"

"The only time he checked it-or attempted to check it-was right before his death."

"What do you mean attempted?"

"The bloodwork never made it to the lab."

Hobbs leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. "Mrs. Kravitz," he began softly, "I was wondering if you could tell us what happened the night your husband died?"

Sheila looked up from her lap and into Hobbs' hazel eyes. "They said it was natural causes."

"What happened that night?" Ed urged.

"That's the part that makes no sense. We were having such a good time. We'd been out with friends. He'd been laughing and joking, and he always took care of himself. You know that he was a diabetic, don't you?"

Hobbs nodded.

"I never thought about it much. We'd been together for almost seven years and I'd never seen him have any trouble with his sugars. Whenever we'd go out he'd just give himself a little short-acting insulin to cover a bigger dinner and a couple drinks. He wasn't one to overdo it. But I should have known something was different-he wasn't acting right."

"How so?" Ed urged.

"On the cab ride home he kept saying how tired he was. Considering he'd been up since six in the morning and had a full day ahead of him, I didn't think much about it."

"And then?"

Sheila closed her eyes tightly and gripped the edges of her chair. She tried to speak, but was overwhelmed with tears.

"It's okay," Barrett fished a tissue out of her pocketbook. "Take your time."

"And then the alarm rang, and I didn't hear him getting up. He was always the first one up. He brought me coffee in bed every single day, and then he'd kiss me. But he didn't get up and I rolled over because I knew he liked to get up early and ... he was dead. He was cold. I called 911 and they told me to give him CPR ... but he was cold. I did it anyway. I couldn't really think, and now that's all I think about is the feeling of his cold lips and the sound of bones cracking in his chest as I tried to give him CPR." She shook her head, and reached for a pack of cigarettes lying on top of a half-packed box. "They did an autopsy," she said, lighting up and taking a deep first drag. "They said that he'd had a ma.s.sive coronary brought on by low blood sugar. There wasn't anything they thought suspicious. h.e.l.l, death by insulin and the first person they'd be pointing fingers at would be the wife, especially if she's twenty years younger ... that's not why you're ..."

"No," Hobbs interjected. "And I have to say how sorry we are for the loss you've suffered."

Sheila looked at the burning cigarette. She sniffled and tears squeezed from her eyes. "I wasn't going to do this today," she said. "I wanted just one day or even a few hours where I wouldn't feel like a total wreck."

"It doesn't work that way," Barrett advised, "you know that."

"The funny thing is, I do. It's just different when you know something and when you're in the middle of it."

"True ... Sheila, you said that in all the years you knew Morris he never had a problem with his blood sugars."

"That's right, he was very careful."

"But that night something happened. When you went out, did he not eat or drink as much as usual?"

"Hardly, if anything I would have thought his sugars would have been high."

"Any chance he could have taken the wrong amount of insulin, or even the wrong type?"

"Morris had a whole a.s.sembly line for doing his syringes. I've still got all his bottles in the refrigerator. You'd think that's something I would have thrown out, but I don't know if it's the wastefulness of that, or on some weird level I'm still waiting for him to come through the door."

"Could we see them?" Hobbs asked.

"If you'd like," Sheila stubbed out her cigarette and led them down the hall into a black-and-white, eat-in kitchen. She opened the brushed-chrome Sub Zero and reached inside.

"Wait a minute," Hobbs stopped her.

"What is it?" Sheila asked, holding onto the door.

"Has anyone handled the bottles since your husband's death?"

"Probably ... I think the EMTs might have. No, on second thought they asked for the bottles and I guess with everything else they just forgot about them."

Hobbs pulled two pairs of sealed latex gloves from the inner pocket of his leather coat. He handed one to Barrett. "You never know," he shrugged.

Sheila stood back as Barrett looked in the refrigerator. It was mostly empty, but carefully arranged inside the cheese container was a half-used metal-and-rubber capped gla.s.s bottle of insulin, and several more still in their boxes. Next to these were seven thin syringes already drawn up with medication.

"How far ahead would he prepare his injections?" Barrett asked.

"He did it weekly, every Sunday during 60 Minutes."

"So he would have taken his evening dose before going out on Thursday, is that correct?" she asked.

"Right."

"He took it twice a day?"

"Yes, why?"

"Well, if he drew it up on Sunday there should only be six syringes left for the week, and there are seven here."

"No," Sheila said, "that's right. It's like I said, he knew we were going out so he drew up a larger dose."

"He wouldn't have just added to what was already there?"

"I guess not," Sheila said. "But now I'm not certain, like I said, he took care of it himself."

"That's strange," Barrett said, reaching a gloved hand into the cheese container.

"What?" Hobbs asked, standing next to her.

"Look at that," Barrett held up a small insulin bottle. "Look at the cap."

"That's not how it's supposed to be?" Hobbs asked.

"No, the metal is all bent, almost like somebody took it off and then put it back on." She took out an unopened box, pulled out a fresh bottle and compared them. "I think this has been tampered with." She turned them upside down, and watched how the clear liquid moved inside the tiny bottles. She read the labels, "These are both supposed to be the same type of insulin, but their viscosity is visibly different."

Hobbs produced an evidence bag from his jacket.

Barrett looked at him, "What else do you keep in there?"

"Guys don't get pocketbooks, so I get my dry cleaner to sew extra pockets into all my coats."

"You must have been a Boy Scout."

"All the way to Eagle." He unzipped the plastic bag and held it open as Barrett dropped in the tampered bottle and its mate.

"Do you have some way to keep those cold?" she asked, looking first at Hobbs and then at Sheila. "Insulin denatures if it's not chilled."

"There's ice in the freezer," Sheila offered. "and there's an old thermos around here someplace. I don't think I packed it. But what's this all about? The coroner said natural causes. The two of you are acting like it's ... like someone killed him."

Hobbs spoke, "Ms. Kravitz, in all likelihood it's exactly as you say, but we have some suspicions that we'd like to put to rest. I will need you to sign for anything we take away as potential evidence."

Barrett watched as Hobbs retrieved a small stack of preprinted forms from his coat of many pockets and had Sheila Kravitz sign.

___.

"So what do you think?" Barrett asked, as they rode down in the elevator.

"I think you think somebody did in the good doctor," Hobbs jiggled the ice-filled blue-and-white thermos.

"And you?" Barrett faced him as the car came to an air-cus.h.i.+oned stop and the wood-paneled doors slid open.

"Something isn't right," he admitted. "You feel like walking this over to the precinct with me?" he asked. "I'll get the guys in the lab to take a look at them."

"Sure, I could use the exercise ... and of course the company."

"Of course," he laughed. "And I've got a little present for you."

"Really?"

"Yup, so you can't say I never got you anything."

"Like Sheila ... You know," Barrett commented, "she's not what I had expected."

"In what way?"

"Fairly traumatized by her husband's death. I can't imagine waking up and finding someone you love dead."

"You think that's why she's moving? I wish we'd asked," Hobbs remarked.

"Why?"

"Well, getting back to things that don't fit, why is she moving? She kept saying how she didn't need all the things he got for her, and I'm thinking the apartment was high on the list. But is she leaving because it's too big, or she can't deal with the memories, or maybe Dr. Kravitz was living a bit beyond his means."

"I'd take number three," Barrett offered.

"Agreed. So the next question is ... what was going on with Morris Kravitz and James Cyrus Martin?"

"Good question. I keep coming back to that d.a.m.n bloodwork. Even a first-year resident knows that it's got to be checked. It's the first thing you do with a new patient on lithium. Every so often you come upon a real old-timer who doesn't think it's necessary. There used to be this school of thought that the way you could tell a patient's level was by how much they shook."

"Charming."

"Yes, psychiatry has a long and distinguished past. It makes you wonder about some of the stuff we do now and what future generations will say about our ignorance and barbarism ... but I digress."