Read Online Diagnosis Murder 7 - The Double LIfe by Lee Goldberg - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lee Goldberg
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discover there was a nurse killing patients. Without his study, the unusual number of deaths might have gone completely undetected."
"I was actually contacted by an administrator I knew who'd worked at two of the hospitals," Barnes said. "He was hoping I might be able to reveal some deficiencies in care that he could correct to reduce the number of patient deaths in rural ICUs. I was as shocked as anybody by what I discovered. It's one of the reasons I'm so outspoken about the need for hospitals to have a full-time epidemiologist on staff to identify rapidly spreading anomalies, natural or otherwise, that might otherwise go unnoticed. That's what I do—I help to find the medical, cultural, institutional, or behavioral causes and their solutions."
"What did you detect, if anything, from the information I gave you?" Mark asked.
Barnes sighed heavily.
"I won't bore you again with all the mathematical formulas I used. Suffice it to say I went back six years instead of three. What I discovered was that patients who'd survived near-death episodes this year were almost fifty percent more likely to die within ninety days than those with similar conditions in the past six years. The probability of such a significant increase in deaths occurring by chance alone is less than one in a trillion. That leads to only one possible explanation for this troubling epidemic."
"Murder," Mark said.
Barnes nodded. "The problem you faced after we met was identifying which of the cases were natural, or truly accidental, and which were homicides."
There were too many variables, too many possible suspects, and still no evidence, beyond statistics, that a crime had occurred. There wasn't enough yet to get Steve involved and, with him, the resources of the LAPD. That was why Mark had assigned Jesse the thankless and tedious job of going through hospital records. Mark was searching for any possible commonalities between the patients in an effort to sort out the natural and accidental deaths from the homicides.
Did the victims have the same medical insurance company? Go to the same hospitals? See the same doctors? Have their prescriptions filled by the same pharmacist? Share the same caregivers, nurses, or lab technicians?
Somewhere there was a point of convergence, but without more to go on, a way to narrow the field, it would take Mark months to find it. And in the meantime more people could be killed.
"Did you have any advice for me?" Mark asked Barnes.
"I'm afraid this is out of my range of expertise," he said. "I'm not well versed in the intricacies of murder."
Emily tipped her head towards Mark. "He is."
C HAPTER E IGHT
Now that Mark's instincts had been confirmed, he faced the daunting task of sifting through the forty-eight deaths, identifying the victims, and determining the pattern that would flush out the killer.
Again.
He was certain that he'd already accomplished the task once before. Now he just had to find a shortcut to reaching the same conclusions, whatever they were, all over again.
One of the two remaining doctors on Mark's list was Dr. Bernard Dalton, a cardiologist who had two patients who'd recently died and whose names showed up on Amanda's report. Dr. Dalton's office happened to be in the building next door, so Mark and Emily went over to see him.
Dalton worked out of the Bell Canyon Cardiology Group, presumably named for the exclusive gated community where most of the partners in the practice lived. The practice took up an entire floor of the building. The vast waiting room was lit by pinpoint halogens and was dominated by two large, flat-screen TVs mounted on the wall, one tuned to CNN, the other showing a computer-generated, and surprisingly lifelike, aquarium full of tropical fish. The patients sat on couches lined with pillows of varying sizes and patterns.
Most of the waiting patients were elderly and seemed, to Mark's experienced eye, to be suffering from more than cardiac problems. Many of them used
"I was actually contacted by an administrator I knew who'd worked at two of the hospitals," Barnes said. "He was hoping I might be able to reveal some deficiencies in care that he could correct to reduce the number of patient deaths in rural ICUs. I was as shocked as anybody by what I discovered. It's one of the reasons I'm so outspoken about the need for hospitals to have a full-time epidemiologist on staff to identify rapidly spreading anomalies, natural or otherwise, that might otherwise go unnoticed. That's what I do—I help to find the medical, cultural, institutional, or behavioral causes and their solutions."
"What did you detect, if anything, from the information I gave you?" Mark asked.
Barnes sighed heavily.
"I won't bore you again with all the mathematical formulas I used. Suffice it to say I went back six years instead of three. What I discovered was that patients who'd survived near-death episodes this year were almost fifty percent more likely to die within ninety days than those with similar conditions in the past six years. The probability of such a significant increase in deaths occurring by chance alone is less than one in a trillion. That leads to only one possible explanation for this troubling epidemic."
"Murder," Mark said.
Barnes nodded. "The problem you faced after we met was identifying which of the cases were natural, or truly accidental, and which were homicides."
There were too many variables, too many possible suspects, and still no evidence, beyond statistics, that a crime had occurred. There wasn't enough yet to get Steve involved and, with him, the resources of the LAPD. That was why Mark had assigned Jesse the thankless and tedious job of going through hospital records. Mark was searching for any possible commonalities between the patients in an effort to sort out the natural and accidental deaths from the homicides.
Did the victims have the same medical insurance company? Go to the same hospitals? See the same doctors? Have their prescriptions filled by the same pharmacist? Share the same caregivers, nurses, or lab technicians?
Somewhere there was a point of convergence, but without more to go on, a way to narrow the field, it would take Mark months to find it. And in the meantime more people could be killed.
"Did you have any advice for me?" Mark asked Barnes.
"I'm afraid this is out of my range of expertise," he said. "I'm not well versed in the intricacies of murder."
Emily tipped her head towards Mark. "He is."
C HAPTER E IGHT
Now that Mark's instincts had been confirmed, he faced the daunting task of sifting through the forty-eight deaths, identifying the victims, and determining the pattern that would flush out the killer.
Again.
He was certain that he'd already accomplished the task once before. Now he just had to find a shortcut to reaching the same conclusions, whatever they were, all over again.
One of the two remaining doctors on Mark's list was Dr. Bernard Dalton, a cardiologist who had two patients who'd recently died and whose names showed up on Amanda's report. Dr. Dalton's office happened to be in the building next door, so Mark and Emily went over to see him.
Dalton worked out of the Bell Canyon Cardiology Group, presumably named for the exclusive gated community where most of the partners in the practice lived. The practice took up an entire floor of the building. The vast waiting room was lit by pinpoint halogens and was dominated by two large, flat-screen TVs mounted on the wall, one tuned to CNN, the other showing a computer-generated, and surprisingly lifelike, aquarium full of tropical fish. The patients sat on couches lined with pillows of varying sizes and patterns.
Most of the waiting patients were elderly and seemed, to Mark's experienced eye, to be suffering from more than cardiac problems. Many of them used
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