Free Fatal Care by Leonard Goldberg Page A

was on the other end. “Yes, Mortimer. . . . We’re almost done, and it seems that Oliver’s death was cardiac in nature. . . . Yes, yes. But we are confirming it with microscopic studies at this very moment. . . .”
    Joanna gestured to Murdock and softly whispered for him to ask Rhodes if there was any family history of unusual cancers.
    “And Mortimer,” Murdock continued, “there was one other disturbing finding. It seems that Oliver had a somewhat unusual lung cancer, as well. Is there any history of uncommon cancers in your family? . . . No. I see. Well, we should complete all the studies within the hour. Should I call you back then? . . . As soon as I have the results.”
    Murdock put the cell phone down and then wavered on his feet for a moment. He steadied himself with a hand on the wall. Slowly he eased himself down onto a metal stool.
    Joanna saw the peaked look on his face and hurried over. “Are you all right, Simon?”
    “Just a little tired,” Murdock said. “It’s been a long day.”
    “For all of us.”
    Murdock tilted his head back against the cool wall, thinking about the death of his own son and the autopsy they did on the boy. “It’s very difficult to talk to a father about the death of his son.”
    “I know,” Joanna said, studying Murdock’s heavily lined face. He was in his late sixties but seemed older with his snow-white hair and stooped posture. And like Joanna, he, too, had put in a long fifteen-hour day. Too long, Joanna thought, now wondering why she always seemed to take on more work than she could handle. Three cases at once—Oliver Rhodes, the drowning victim, and the Russian with the dead fetuses—were too much, way too much. She’d be lucky to get home before midnight.
    The door swung open, and Dennis Green returned.
    “It’s straightforward,” he announced. “There are two different cancers in Mr. Rhodes. The lung is an adenocarcinoma; the heart, a sarcoma.”
    Joanna asked, “Was it a rhabdomyosarcoma?”
    “Probably,” Green replied. “I’ll know for sure when we do the routine stains.”
    Murdock pushed himself up from the stool. “And you believe that caused his death?”
    “Oh, yeah,” Green said with certainty. “It was a nasty-looking malignancy that extended way into the septum. He died a cardiac death beyond any question.”
    Joanna shook her head sadly. “And his heart looked so good from the outside, like the heart of an athlete. And his coronary arteries were wide open.”
    “It’s kind of ironic,” Lori said, more to herself than to the others. “He undergoes a risky procedure to clean out his coronary arteries so he’ll have a heart that will last for another fifty years. Instead, the organ that was supposed to prolong his life ends up killing him.”
    Green’s eyebrows went up. “He underwent that experimental artery-cleansing procedure? The one where they use the enzyme?”
    Joanna nodded. “He had it done a year ago. So what?”
    “So he represents the second case of cancer I’ve seen in this group. That’s what.”
    “Are you telling us that you’ve seen two sarcomas of the heart in patients who’ve undergone this procedure?” Joanna asked carefully.
    Green thought back and then shook his head. “The first patient had her cerebral arteries cleaned out and later developed an astroblastoma.”
    “A what?” Murdock asked.
    “An astroblastoma,” Green answered. “It’s a very rare form of brain cancer.”
    The group went silent, each person lost in his or her own thoughts. The ventilation system overhead clicked off. The air became still.
    “We’ve got trouble here,” Joanna said gravely.
    “Not necessarily,” Murdock said at once. “We have only two cases of cancer occurring in this group.”
    “Two cases of very rare cancer occurring in a very
small
group,” Joanna corrected him. “That’s not happenstance, Simon.”
    “But it doesn’t prove cause and effect,” Murdock argued.
    Joanna ignored