Brainwaves, p.6
Brainwaves, page 6
part #8 of Joanna Blalock Series
“It works pretty good, huh?”
“For a while,” Joanna said. “But eventually the artery becomes blocked again and the procedure usually has to be repeated.”
Jake thought about the procedure and wondered how much pain was associated with it. It wasn’t just a little needle stick, he guessed. “So the unit is used mostly by heart doctors?”
“Right.”
“Then what was the neurologist doing in there?”
“Dissolving a brain clot.” Joanna described how a flexible tube was guided up to a cerebral artery that had been blocked off by a thrombus. “Then they squirt a clot-dissolving agent through the catheter and the vessel is reopened.”
Jake rubbed his chin, trying to envision the procedure within the brain. “How the hell do they know where the clots are?”
“They use a fluoroscope and a radiopaque dye,” Joanna explained. “In addition, they have a little camera at the end of the tube that allows them to see right into the artery. It’s almost like watching television. The picture is that good.”
“Jesus,” Jake muttered, amazed as always at what medical technology could do. “Who invented that?”
“Karen Crandell,” Joanna replied, thinking back to the lecture the murdered neurologist had given. “She gave a talk here at Memorial about six months ago and told us about her new discovery. It was spellbinding, Jake, absolutely spellbinding.”
Jake took out his notepad and began flipping through pages. He came to the one he was looking for, then glanced at the wall clock. It was 9 a.m. “According to the technician in the Angiography Unit, Karen Crandell left the room around nine p.m. So let’s make believe it’s now nine p.m. and see if we can track the last twenty-eight minutes of Dr. Crandell’s life.”
Jake looked to his left, then to his right down the long corridor. “Which way would she have gone after leaving the unit?”
“To the right,” Joanna said. “That’s where the closest elevator is.”
Jake led the way, moving along at a brisk pace. Karen Crandell would have walked fast, he thought. It was late and she wanted to finish up the work that lay ahead of her. And she must have had a fair amount of work to do. Otherwise she wouldn’t have bothered to pick up a sandwich.
They came to the elevator and Jake pushed the button.
“Late at night the elevator would have arrived quickly. Right?” Jake asked.
Joanna nodded. “Within a minute or two.”
“Would she have used the ladies’ room on her way over?”
“No way,” Joanna said firmly. “She wouldn’t use a public John when there’s a private one for staff at the
BRI.”
“The what?” Jake asked, not understanding the letters.
“The BRI. It’s short for the Brain Research Institute,” Joanna said. “What’s so important about a stop in the ladies’ room?”
Jake shrugged. “Just trying to account for every second of her last twenty-eight minutes.”
“You mean her last twenty minutes.”
Jake shook his head. “Naw. Twenty-eight. Her smashed watch stopped at nine twenty-eight. Remember?”
“That’s when she landed,” Joanna said. “But the evidence indicates that somebody iced her five to ten minutes before that. So when she left the Angiography Unit, she had about twenty minutes of life left, not twenty-eight.”
“Good point.”
The elevator door opened and they entered a car
filled with chatting medical students. The students abruptly quieted down when they saw the name tag on Joanna’s long white laboratory coat. It read:
JOANNA BLALOCK, M.D.” PROFESSOR OF FORENSIC PATHOLOGY.
Jake stared up at the floor indicator, thinking that twenty minutes was going to be a tight squeeze. Karen Crandell had to go from the Angiography Unit to the elevator, then up to the cafeteria for a sandwich, then across the bridge to the Neuropsychiatric Institute, then up to the BRI. And then to her laboratory, where she unwrapped her sandwich and nibbled on it. That was a lot to do in twenty minutes.
The elevator door opened onto a crowded main lobby. Streams of people were moving in different directions. Some were going to the front entrance, others to the banks of elevators, a few toward a busy information desk. Their combined conversations sounded like a continuous hum.
“Which way?” Jake asked.
Joanna took his arm. “The cafeteria is to the right.”
They moved through the crowd to the other side of the lobby, then turned into a short corridor that led to swinging doors.
Joanna pointed ahead. “Go through those doors and you’re in the doctors’ cafeteria. That’s where she got her sandwich.”
“Did she have to stand in line or wait for any length of time?” Jake asked.
“Probably not,” Joanna said. “It wouldn’t be busy at nine p.m. All she had to do was pick up a sandwich and sign the on-call sheet.”
“That wouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”
“If that.”
Jake glanced at his watch. They had used up eight minutes so far. “Which way to the glass-enclosed bridge?”
“Back across the lobby.”
They walked across the lobby, passing the elevators and a bank of public telephones before coming to a set of swinging doors. They pushed through the doors and entered the glass-enclosed bridge, which was brightly lit by the morning sun. Outside, the sky was cloudless, the day cool and breezy.
Jake took out his notepad and began thumbing through it. “The bridge is guarded between nine p.m. and midnight. Then the door is locked until the next morning. We questioned the guard who was on duty the night of the murder. He said foot traffic on the bridge was real light that evening. Maybe a dozen people or so, mostly nurses and aides. All were in uniform and all had ID badges.”
Jake checked his watch once more. “The reason we’ve stopped here is because the guard remembered Karen Crandell walking through. They had a brief conversation.”
“How brief?”
“Maybe thirty seconds or so. Let’s move on.”
They went through the doors into the Neuropsychiatric Institute and crossed over to the twin elevators.
Joanna pushed the elevator button. “You know, Jake, just because the people who crossed the bridge that night all had on white uniforms and name tags doesn’t mean much. Those things are easy to reproduce. An outsider could have slipped through with no problem.”
Jake smiled thinly. “Suppose I told you that everyone who went across the bridge between nine and twelve that night was a female?”
Joanna blinked. “Are you sure?”
“The guard volunteered that information. And he was damn sure.”
“Then our killer didn’t come across the bridge that night,” Joanna said with certainty.
“You got it,” Jake agreed. “This murder wasn’t committed by a female. They kill with knives or poison or sometimes guns. But they don’t bash people over the head. That’s the way a man would do it.”
“And it would take a man to lift a dead body and lug it down the corridor to the fire escape.”
“That, too.” Jake flipped to another page in his notepad. “The guard remembers seeing Karen Crandell at about nine-thirty.”
Joanna narrowed her eyes. “That’s a little off, isn’t it?”
“A little, but the guard wasn’t really sure of the time.”
Jake went to the next page in his notepad. “So the murderer didn’t come across the bridge that night. That means the only way out was through the front entrance, which is guarded around the clock. Everybody has to sign in and out.”
Joanna quickly considered the possibilities. “Maybe he got out through the fire escape exit.”
Jake shook his head. “If the door to the outside is opened, an alarm goes off. And that alarm hasn’t been tampered with.”
“And this doesn’t look like the work of a disturbed patient, does it?”
Jake shook his head again. “Nut cases don’t bother to cover up their murders. They don’t give a damn.”
“And it’s unlikely the murderer spent the night in the institute and waited for morning to cross the bridge.”
“Naw. A murderer would get the hell out of there as fast as he could.”
The elevator door opened. They entered an empty car. Joanna pressed the button for the tenth floor.
“Let’s get back to the people who signed out of the institute after nine-thirty,” Jake said, turning to another page. “There were ten of them. Four full-time staff doctors, six outside psychiatrists. Farelli is checking on the outside six.”
Joanna smiled at the mention of Lou Farelli, a homicide sergeant who had been Jake’s partner for more than ten years. “How is Farelli doing?”
“Better,” Jake said. “He was out with a bad case of bronchitis for a while.”
“Not again,” Joanna said, concerned.
“He gets it every year, like clockwork.”
The elevator stopped at the sixth floor. The door opened, but no one entered. After a moment, the door closed and the elevator began to ascend.
“Who were those four full-time staff members you mentioned?” Joanna asked.
“All were from the BR1,” Jake replied. “And all were on the tenth floor between nine and ten p.m.”
Joanna’s eyes brightened. “You’ve got yourself four suspects.”
“I wish,” Jake said sourly.
“Why aren’t they suspects?”
“Because every damn one of them has an ironclad alibi.”
The elevator came to a stop and the door opened. Jake checked his wristwatch. Seventeen minutes had
passed. The killer must have been waiting for her in her office.
As they exited, Jake looked down the corridor to Karen Crandell’s laboratory. The area was still sealed off with crime-scene tape. A uniformed police officer was stationed outside the door to the laboratory.
Jake turned to Joanna. “After we finish the interviews, I’d like you to help me figure out some machines in the victim’s office.”
“Maybe you should ask Karen’s technician.”
“I did, but she wasn’t much help.”
They headed down the corridor, away from Karen Crandell’s laboratory. All the doors were closed. There was no sound except for the clicking of their heels against the tiled floor.
“It’s kind of spooky here, isn’t it?” Jake commented.
“That’s because you know you’re in a place that does research on human brains. That’ll Spock just about anybody.”
“I guess,” Jake said. But it was more than that. Something else about the place bothered him.
They came to a large wooden door with a brass plate attached to it. The engraving on the plate read:
EVAN BONDURANT, M.D.
DIRECTOR, BRAIN RESEARCH INSTITUTE
“I talked with this guy briefly late yesterday afternoon,” Jake said. “He had just gotten back from a scientific meeting that he and the others had attended in Santa Monica. He was the one who told me that all four full-time staff members were in the BRI between nine and ten on the night of the murder. According to
the log book at the front desk, they all signed out by ten after ten.”
“And everyone had a rock-solid alibi?”
Jake nodded. “According to Bondurant, they were all together, which means they can vouch for one another.”
“Pretty solid,” Joanna had to agree.
Jake smiled crookedly. “Unless all four are lying.”
They entered a spacious reception area. Tasteful watercolors and exotic plants lined the walls. A secretary behind a circular desk carefully examined Jake’s shield and ID, then led the way into the director’s office.
The door closed quietly behind Jake and Joanna.
Evan Bondurant, his back to them, was feeding the fish in a big tank behind his desk. He glanced over his shoulder and said, “Please have a seat. I’ll be with you in just a moment.” Then he went back to the fish racing to and fro across the tank.
Joanna and Jake sat in comfortable leather chairs facing a polished mahogany desk. The office was ex qusitely appointed with a parquet floor that was covered in places with Persian rugs. To the rear was a leather couch and an antique coffee table with silver inlays. It was by far the largest office Joanna had seen at Memorial, even larger than Simon Murdock’s.
She gazed at the rear wall, which was covered with framed diplomas, awards, and personal photographs. One large photograph showed Bondurant and Christopher Moran at some sort of costume party. They were wearing top hats with tails and black cloaks. Both men were leaning on silver-headed walking sticks.
“Notice how the fish dart back and forth as if on command,” Bondurant said, his back still turned to them. “And they do so in unison, in perfect timing. How do you think they manage to do that, Joanna?”
“It’s probably instinctive behavior.”
“That would be my guess, too.” Bondurant went on sprinkling food into the fish tank. “And since by definition an instinct is an inborn pattern of activity, we can say these fish inherited this type of behavior from their ancestors. So something in the fish’s brain dictates that they respond this way when they’re threatened. And this behavior is passed from one generation to the next. It’s much like an inherited memory.”
“Are you saying that fish have inherited memories?” Joanna asked.
Bondurant dusted fish food off his hands. “Why should they be different from any other living creature? Hunting dogs point and cats stalk without ever being taught to do so. It’s all inherited forms of behavior.”
“But that sort of behavior is really kind of primitive,” Joanna said.
“Oh?” Bondurant smiled benignly. “Is it more primitive than the inherited behavior of the person who killed Karen Crandell?”
Jake looked up from his notepad, suddenly interested. “So you think that most murderers are born with a killer instinct?”
“Some very good scientists believe that to be the case,” Bondurant said. “They contend that if you look into the family background of most killers and go back four or five generations, you’ll find a surprising
number of murderers. You might uncover a saint or priest here or there, but the violent, criminal element will predominate.”
Jake nodded to himself. He had always thought that killers were born that way: mean and nasty as hell. “Do scientists believe that murderers inherit the ability to kill?”
Bondurant shook his head. “They inherit the tendency, and given the appropriate stimulus, they will kill. And they seem to do it almost on impulse. You could think of it as inherited compulsive behavior.”
“What about premeditated murder?” Joanna challenged.
“The initial decision to murder is made on impulse,” Bondurant told her. “Some stimulus sets off that deep-seated impulse and the course is set. The premeditation has to do with planning how and where the murder will be committed.”
“Has this concept ever been proven?” Joanna asked.
“No,” Bondurant said, reaching for a tissue to clean his hands. “But someday it will be.”
Joanna wasn’t convinced of the concept but found it difficult to argue with Evan Bondurant, who was considered a world expert on the neuro physiology of memory. He had become director of the BRI six years earlier when the institute was performing poorly and with no apparent focus. Its national reputation was deteriorating, its funding sources drying up. Bondurant promptly fired everyone and brought in new staff, all with expertise in the field of memory. Within two years the BRI became a world-renowned center for memory research. Its
reputation soared; the research dollars flowed in. The group was thought to be on track for a Nobel Prize. Its major goal was to decipher the human memory mechanism and apply that knowledge to the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
Bondurant squeezed into the swivel chair behind his desk and tilted back. He was a stout man in his late forties with a protuberant abdomen and a double chin. His face was round and unlined, his head bald except for a few strands carefully combed across the top. “Tell me how I can help you with your investigation.”
“Let’s begin with Karen Crandell’s background,” Jake said, flipping to a new page in his notepad.
Bondurant reached for a pipe and began to pack it with tobacco. “Karen was a very bright woman who was invited to join our group four years ago. She accepted. We were delighted. She was a perfect fit.”
“How do you mean, fit?” Jake asked.
“You’ll understand when I tell you about her history,” Bondurant went on. “Karen started out as a promising physicist who was working toward a Ph.D. degree in fiber optics. During her studies, Karen became interested in brain wave transmission and decided to go to medical school. Her goal was to learn all about the brain so she could apply her knowledge of electrical wave transmission to brain function. In essence, she became a physician so she could do neurologic research.”
Jake shook his head in admiration. “She must have had a brain the size of a truck.”
“Just about.” Bondurant continued, “Anyhow, she completed her postgraduate studies at Harvard, and
stayed on there as a research physician. In no time at all, it became clear to everyone how bright she was. Her research was truly outstanding. She received offers to join the top medical centers in the country, but decided to stay put at Harvard. Until Christopher Moran persuaded her to become part of our group at Memorial.”
“I didn’t know that Moran was a member of the BRI,” Joanna interrupted.
“Oh, yes,” Bondurant said, carefully lighting his pipe. “Moran, of course, is chief of neurosurgery at Memorial, but he has a keen interest in the human memory mechanism. He only spends part of his time at the BRI, but his contributions have been very important to us. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s return to the Karen Crandell story.”
Bondurant puffed on his pipe and sent up a plume of blue smoke. “So Karen came to Memorial, and it seemed she would fit in perfectly. All of our efforts here are directed to understanding the mechanisms of human memory. As you might guess, in all of neuro physiology there’s nothing more mysterious than the process by which human memory occurs. What we do know is that it depends on the transmission of electrochemical impulses. In simple terms, the memory mechanism works like a computer. It receives and processes information, then stores it away where it can be retrieved later. And just like a computer, it depends on complex electric circuitry. When something goes wrong with the circuitry, such as Alzheimer’s disease, the memory mechanism goes awry. If you could somehow repair the circuits, you could restore the memory mechanism in these patients. And that’s the goal of our research—to
