Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

“What if the files are identical? What if Louise Xeroxed what was in the file, as it was in the file, then what?”
    I shook my head. “I tracked down Celia. I was hoping for another view of Madison. I was hoping for something more sympathetic, which is what I got. But I also got more than I’d bargained for. I got this cock-and-bull story of how Dr. Bechman was supporting his second family. You do know . . .“
    “Yes,” she said. “Of course. I didn’t think what they did was right, but—”
    “Not the point, Doctor. We all judge, but that’s not the issue here. And all beside the point now. The issue is that he needed enough money to take care of Celia and JoAnn without it showing up on his taxes, forms his wife would be signing, too. Even if she’s one of those unconscious women who has no idea what’s going on financially in her own family, just having that information available in black and white was a poor idea. For example, had they ever split up, had a lawyer ever gotten hold of his tax forms,” shaking my head, “that wasn’t a trail he wanted to leave. If his wife did find out, he’d be finished in every way you can think of.”
    Dr. Edelstein sat down again.
    “Celia said that Eric has this gig with an advertising company where he ran focus groups for them to determine things in advance about new drugs before they went on the market, what kind of wording would make people feel most confident, what color the pills should be, that kind of stuff. She said they paid him off the books, that they paid him in cash.” I could see by the expression on her face that she didn’t buy the story either.
    “Unlikely,” I said. “That’s what I thought, too. Oh, I’m sure the drug companies hire advertising firms and I’m sure those firms run focus groups and do everything they can to sell us, the public, on their new products, even in those circumstances where the need for such a product didn’t previously exist. They’re very good at that and the American public is endlessly gullible. But to pay enough money to support a family and do that off the books?” I shook my head. “That I can’t imagine. And even if I could, Doctor, just the same way when you hear a few symptoms, you can list the rest of them, just the same way the traffic cop shakes his head when you tell him you were only speeding because you were going downhill, that’s the way I can tell when someone’s spinning out a story, making it up as they go along. The voice goes up in register, ever so slightly, but I can hear it. Eye contact diminishes. And most people talk faster, even louder, once they’re on a roll, particularly if they think you’re buying what they’re selling.”
    “Is that why you think she was killed, because she knew the truth and she might tell it one day?”
    I nodded.
    “And you think the truth, whatever Eric was doing to raise the money he needed, you think that is connected to what may have been removed from Madison’s records?”
    “I do, Doctor.”
    “Some kind of insurance fraud?”
    “I can’t answer your question until you call me tomorrow.”
    She stood. Again she didn’t leave. I stood, too, and reached for her free hand.
    “Please be careful, Doctor. Someone was willing to let a child take the fall for stabbing her doctor in the heart. Someone killed a second time to keep a secret.”
    “Then you don’t know?”
    “Know what?”
    “The needle used to inject Botox into the muscles just beneath the surface of the skin is barely an inch long.”
    “So it couldn’t reach the heart?”
    “There’s more than one way to reach the heart, Ms. Alexander.”
    “I read that Botox could prove fatal if it paralyzed the respiratory muscles. Is that what happened?”
    She shook her head. “He died too quickly for it to have been any sort of paralysis from the Botox.”
    “Anaphylactic shock?”
    She nodded. “His body shut down in a matter of seconds.”
    “Did he know about the allergy?”
    “I have no reason to think he did.”
    “But then whoever killed him couldn’t have known either.”
    “We can assume that.”
    “Which means his death was an accident?”
    “Of sorts,” she said. She took the copy of Madison’s medical records and slipped them into the outside pocket of her purse, handing me the finished drawing, a heart broken in two.
    “But Celia’s death wasn’t,” I said. “And it wasn’t suicide. It was murder.” I folded Madison’s drawing and put it into