Chapter 61
With that chore out of the way, Simon returned to the monotonous task of tracking murder-by-poison cases over the past forty years.
Landy received clearance from her supervisor—crime data was not exactly classified material—and was passing along links to more crime statistics than any one person could read and filter.
The previous year there had been twenty-two cases, or at least twenty-two people had been indicted for such murders.
Four had pled guilty. The others were still awaiting justice.
The troublesome trend in the past decade was that about a third of the persons accused walked free with not-guilty verdicts.
Murder by poison was hard to prove. This, obviously, was not comforting to Simon.
He had been nailed by a screwball jury, and the more he dwelt on his verdict, the more he was convinced he had been convicted because of the greedy-lawyer theme the prosecution had used so effectively.
“Bingo,” she said.
“And?”
“A major breakthrough. Just wormed my way into the hospital’s archives and found the employment application for our boy.”
“Congrats. I will not ask how you did it?”
“You wouldn’t understand if I drew pictures for you.”
“Thanks, as always.”
“Oscar Kofie applied to Blue Ridge Memorial in 2013. His previous job was the same, an X-ray tech at the University of Maryland hospital, where he worked for two years. Before that, a system in Scranton. Before that, a hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Seems he moves around every two or three years. I’ll send you the data. ”
“Any reasons for his departures?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He applied in an effort to get a job, not lose another one. Why would he include anything even remotely negative?”
“Got it.” Simon once again chastised himself for throwing out useless questions when he knew damned well they would draw a sarcastic retort.
“I’ll send it over.”
“Can you take a look at his HR files at previous hospitals?”
“I’m on it. So is Cooley.”
“Thanks.”
Simon fell asleep on his sofa, which was more comfortable than his cot, though between them they were wreaking havoc with his spine.
He slept a few hours and woke up with the sunrise.
He went to the reception area, peeked out the front window, saw no one and no traffic, and at 6:15 sneaked out the back door into the alley and went for a long run.
Day 51, more than halfway to his sentencing date when Judge Shyam would be forced to send him away for a long time.
After a shower, he packed his gear and drove three hours south to a state park in the Appalachian Mountains.
Paula had spent the first night with the kids in a rustic cabin on a lake, and she was eager to hand them off and get away.
She and her old girlfriends from Braxton had a week of partying planned in the Outer Banks.
The family ate hot dogs together for lunch, then Paula made a quick exit.
Simon was in charge of the kids, so there were no rules.
They swam in the lake for hours, fished the mountain streams, canoed and kayaked, ate junk food at will, and watched old movies until they fell asleep.
No one said a word about the future, though it was always there, hanging over them like a distant cloud.
Buck and Danny knew far more about the case than Simon could imagine.
It was not clear how much Janie knew because she said little.
All three ignored the mess their father was in, or at least did a fine job of pretending to.
The only unbendable rule for the week was no devices.
The vacation was offline. They awoke early, went nonstop during the days, and at night played old-fashioned board games and cards when they were not watching movies.
Simon taught them poker, though it was obvious the boys had played it before.
He taught them gin rummy, bridge, and blackjack.
Before long they were betting with plastic poker chips, and all three kids seemed to have a knack for the table.
Little Janie did especially well and suggested they up the ante to real pennies.
Simon worried about the example he was setting, but let it pass.
He admitted to himself that he missed the action at Chub’s.
It was harmless fun, right? By the third night, Janie was up a hundred and ten cents at blackjack.
After the kids crashed, Simon sneaked to his car for a shot or two of bourbon and a quick check of phone messages. On the fourth night, he finally returned a call. Zander had texted: Call. Important. Could be very important.
Without hesitating, he violated The Rule and called her.
She answered with “How much are you paying your lawyers?” Always with something random.
“I don’t know. Is it really any of your business?”
“Could be.”
“Not much. Actually, they’re not getting paid. It’s called pro bono.”
“I’ve heard of that. It means for free, right?”
“I thought this was urgent.”
“Well, your pro bono hacking team is kicking ass and finding more dirt than your pro bono legal team.”
“I’m listening.”
“Cooley and I are making a wild hunch that our boy Oscar Kofie is a serial killer.”
When Zander was wired and on a roll, small pauses in the conversation were usually filled by another shot from her. “You there?”
“Uh, I don’t know.”
“He moves around and leaves dead bodies behind.”
Cell service was sketchy at best. He lost the call, tried again, and couldn’t get her.
He quietly walked through the cabin, to make sure the kids were sound asleep.
They were, and he returned to his car and drove away.
There was a picnic area on an incline with great views of the lake and the service was better.
He parked there and called Zander. It was almost midnight and the full moon seemed touchable.
“Sorry about that. I’m in the mountains. The part about leaving dead bodies behind.”
“Yeah, just a hunch, something to work with, but Cooley and I like it. Three years ago Kofie worked in a hospital in Baltimore. While he was there, three people, all geezers, died of unknown causes, which, as we’re learning, is unusual.
Unknown causes is rare these days. The docs always find a cause, you know, makes ’em look better.
Kofie left two months after the last one died and showed up in Braxton.
The kicker is in Pennsylvania. Kofie worked at a hospital in Scranton for three years.
There were two mysterious deaths—both of unknown causes.
However, I’ve seen the records and the victims suffered severe headaches and nausea, internal bleeding, skin rashes, etc. ”
“Sounds like thallium.”
“You got it. What’s intriguing is that the personnel file goes blank. Zilch, nada, as if someone tried to wipe it clean and bury it. But they got a bit sloppy and missed a few sheets of paper. One was a letter from a lawyer, guy named Victor Mulrooney. From Scranton. Ever heard of him?”
“No. You have the employees’ files and the patients’ records?”
“Come on, Latch, you think I’m just making this shit up? I told you. Hospitals are a piece of cake. They store everything in the cloud and just dare people like me to take a peek. Get with it. You wanna talk about Kofie or you wanna marvel at the brilliance of your pro bono hacking team?”
“What’s his name? Victor Mulrooney?”
“Yeah, looks like a legit lawyer. We thought we’d let you dig through his dirty boxers since you’re a lawyer and all, or at least you used to be.”
“Thanks. So there was a lawsuit?”
“Don’t know but the lawyers got involved. I’ve rummaged through the court records for the Scranton area and can’t find a case with either patient’s name.”
“Just guessing, but there probably wasn’t a lawsuit, I mean, nothing that was filed in court.
If they caught Kofie with his chemicals, the hospital was probably extremely eager to settle the matter and keep it quiet.
So they bought off the victims, or the victims’ families, and the lawyers, and tried to wipe the file clean. ”
“Can you talk to Mulrooney?”
“Sure, if he’ll talk. Let’s slow down a bit. I need to chew on this. There are plenty of angles and dangers.”
“Okay, Latch, you’re the lawyer.”
For breakfast, the kids wanted pancakes and sausage, and Simon managed to whip out a batch in the small, spartan kitchen.
By the time they were finished, every dish, pot, and pan in the cabin was dirty.
He ran them out of the cabin and to the lake where they jumped into three kayaks and took off.
It was their last full day of vacation and they were already griping about leaving.
Simon treasured the moments, but he was also eager to get home and meet with Zander and his lawyers.
With the kids disappearing in the distance across the lake, Simon opened his laptop.
Victor Mulrooney was a board-certified member of the College of Trial Lawyers, an elite group of courtroom studs with at least a hundred jury verdicts under their belts and a minimum of one billion dollars in recoverable damages.
He was sixty-four years old, Rutgers undergrad, Penn Law, founding partner of a firm with at least thirty lawyers who did nothing but personal injury litigation, with a specialty in medical malpractice.
Simon called Raymond and asked if he knew Mulrooney. He did not, but would check him out. Simon relayed the latest news from Zander, and Raymond was stunned by the suggestion that Kofie might possibly have a history of poisoning patients. “A complete game-changer,” he said more than once.
No kidding.
An hour later, as Simon was finishing the dishes and keeping an eye on the lake, Raymond called back. The cell service went south. Simon got in his car and hustled up the mountain.
“I talked to Mulrooney,” Raymond said. “Nothing is easy. He can’t talk.”
“What do you mean he can’t talk?”
“NDA. Nondisclosure agreement, one with plenty of teeth. Are you familiar with them?”
“Somewhat. There are various types.”
“Yep, and Mulrooney signed a tough one, which means the hospital, and I’m assuming it’s the hospital in Scranton where Kofie worked, was horrified by the allegations and threw a lot of money at a settlement. A very confidential settlement.”
“Would he confirm that there was a claim against Kofie and the hospital?”
“No, he wouldn’t confirm anything. But, he did say something interesting, almost as an aside. It was a brief conversation, and at the end he said something like, ‘This is the phone call I never wanted to get.’ ”
“Meaning?”
“Maybe he was afraid Kofie would kill someone else. Maybe he took the money and went home instead of destroying the hospital and Kofie in a civil lawsuit, then handing him over to the police for a criminal prosecution. Maybe Mulrooney was bought off and thus allowed the killing to go on.”
Simon’s brain was spinning and he couldn’t speak for a moment.
“Must’ve been a lot of money.”
“No doubt. Casey ran a quickie on the hospital, third-largest private system in Pennsylvania. Tons of cash, tons of insurance, and plenty of competition. Thus, reputation is everything.”
“Okay, Raymond, contact Judge Shyam and tell her I need to leave the state for seventy-two hours. I’ll drive straight to Scranton, pester Mulrooney until he talks, then drive straight home.”
“What if she says no?”
“I don’t care, Raymond, I’ll go anyway. I’m a convicted murderer. What else can they do to me?”
“Okay, okay. But what if Casey goes with you?”
“No, I don’t need babysitting.”