John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

‘And what if it wasn’t about his pain? How about if it was something else?’

Lanier could see that Tosca didn’t expect this. The question slowed him. He fiddled with a sugar cube, turning it around and around on the bar. Lanier leaned in closer. ‘Somebody killed him, Dan. We don’t know why. If it wasn’t the kid, we’d like to know it before we arrest him again.’

‘You’re saying it was business?’

‘I’m saying I don’t know. Maybe somebody does. I’m wondering if there wasn’t something else in the fish.’ Meaning drugs. If the illegal fish sales – condoned as they were – were a cover, if Sal had in fact been a mule for some major dealers, there might be a motive.‘

But Tosca was shaking his head. ‘That didn’t happen,’ he said flatly. ‘He sold fish. Good fish too.’

‘A lot of it?’

Tosca eyed him carefully. ‘One day a week.’

‘Not exactly what I asked.’

The twirling had moved from the sugar cube to the cup itself. ‘I don’t think he cleared two hundred a week. What he needed to survive. There wasn’t any loan to welsh on. This was cash business – he paid when he picked up.’

‘Okay, but the suppliers? Some of them turn volume, am I right?’

Tosca thought a beat. ‘You’re asking was Sal blackmailing somebody, getting some payoff? If they didn’t pay, maybe he’d fink to Fish and Game? Why would he do that? More money? What would he need more money for?’

Lanier shrugged. ‘Suddenly he needed morphine?’

Although not particularly convincing to Tosca, this was at least an answer. He chewed his cheek for a minute, popped a sugar cube into his mouth, and chewed some more. ‘Okay, there’s one guy,’ he said. ‘I’ll see what I can find out.’

‘If you give me his name,’ Lanier said, ‘I can go see him tonight.’ At Tosca’s glare, he explained. ‘We’re on deadline here, Danny. Sooner would be better.’

The glare abated. Tosca patted Lanier’s hand on the bar. ‘I hear you, Marcel. I’ll see what I can find out.’

Sarah was almost beginning to think Sal Russo had sat in his room for hours, making up names and telephone numbers. Certainly, not one number she reached in the first hour admitted to knowing him, or had any idea what her call could be about. She reasoned that there must be a password she didn’t know, or everybody knew that Sal Russo was the subject of a murder investigation. Either way, the well was dry.

Until she got to the name Finer. Disheartened and ready to call it a day, she listened to five rings and was about to hang up when a weary voice answered. ‘Who’s this? What time is it?’

‘Mr Finer?’

A deep sigh. Exhaustion. ‘ Doctor Finer. And I’m not on call. This isn’t right. I haven’t slept in two days. How’d you get this number?’

‘From Sal Russo.’

‘I don’t know any Sal Russo.’

‘Dr Finer, wait a minute. This is Sergeant Evans with San Francisco homicide. Sal Russo’s been murdered.’

She wondered if he’d hung up anyway. There was nothing but air in her ear. Then another sigh.

‘Homicide? Who’s been murdered?’

She gave him an abbreviated version and at the end of it, he seemed to have broken a bit through the fatigue. ‘Did I treat this man? I’m sorry, but I’m interning at County. It’s not like I have patients the way you’re thinking. What did he have?’

‘Cancer. A brain tumor,’ she said, ‘and Alzheimer’s.’

‘And you got my number at his house?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, then, I might have seen him. But I’ll tell you, it wasn’t recently. I’ve been in the ER for the past six months and if he wasn’t bleeding, I didn’t treat him.’

‘He wasn’t bleeding. But it might have been before that. I don’t know when it was. I’ve got your name and phone number on an old crumpled piece of paper and that’s all I know.’

She heard, ‘I’ve got to get some sleep.’ Then, ‘What was your name again?’

‘Evans.’

‘All right, Evans, hold on. It might be a minute. Russo?’

‘Sal Russo,’ she said.

It was more like five minutes, but Sarah was content to wait. At least she had someone trying to find something related to Sal Russo. It was better than punching phone numbers and getting nothing.

Finally, he was back. ‘If he had this number, I must have seen him here.’ This didn’t mean anything to Sarah, but he was going on. ‘Salvatore Russo? He’d be near sixty now, right?’

‘That was him.’

‘All right.’ Finer was obviously reading his notes. ‘He came into the public clinic on his own and was referred to me. I was doing primary care. Said he’d gotten lost twice in the last couple of months, just suddenly couldn’t figure out where he was. He was worried he might have AD.’

‘AD?’

‘Alzheimer’s. So anyway, let’s see, hold on.’ She waited and heard paper flipping. ‘Yeah, I scheduled him for blood chemistry and a thyroid panel, but he didn’t show. Then he had another episode – this was four months later – and we tried it again, the blood tests.’

‘Is that how you diagnose Alzheimer’s? Blood tests?’

‘No. First you eliminate other possible causes of dementia – third-stage syphilis, for example. There isn’t any diagnostic genetic test for AD. We’re talking a whole battery of this and that until they get to imaging, and even then the diagnosis, especially at the early stage, is uncertain.’

‘But you did diagnose Sal?’

He made sure, answering slowly. ‘No. He stopped coming. We never got to the MRI. He didn’t want to know for sure, maybe he got scared.’

‘Of knowing?’

‘Some of that, I’m sure. I don’t know, maybe I made some mistakes. I’ve got a note here – he wanted to know what would happen if we got to a diagnosis.’

‘What would happen?’

‘Well, I’m mandated to report to the DMV , for example. If somebody’s got advance dementia, you don’t want-’

‘No, I see that.’

‘Also, this was him, not me, but I’ve got it here where he said he didn’t want to get to be a burden on anybody. He’d kill himself before that happened.’

‘He said that?’.

‘Yeah. But then… you know, this is hard to deal with. He didn’t want to get any closer to it, especially if he thought it would be his duty or something to kill himself if he had it. He’d rather not know about it for sure.’

‘That makes sense,’ Evans said. She tried another tack. ‘So you didn’t prescribe anything for him?’

‘No. We hadn’t gotten anywhere, really.’

‘Do you remember him at all, personally?’

A pause, then a sigh. ‘These last couple of years, I often don’t remember my name. I’m on autopilot. Supposedly it’s going to make me a better doctor someday.’

Sarah felt for the man. ‘I won’t keep you much longer, Doctor. It wasn’t you who prescribed a DNR tag for him, then?’

‘Don’t resuscitate? No. Did he finally kill himself, if he had a DNR and cancer? I thought you said somebody killed him.’

‘We think so. We’re trying to make sure. Here’s the last question: you’re a doctor and you couldn’t diagnose Alzheimer’s only a couple of years ago. Could it have progressed far enough by now that he was somehow incompetent to live alone?’

Finer gave it some thought. ‘I can’t say for sure. It could. It varies. He could be going in and out of dementia with more frequency and still live a semi-normal life if he had help. Of course there’s no cure. It just keeps getting worse. You know,’ Finer concluded, ‘if he had the DNR, that’s a pretty good argument he wanted to die.’

‘I know,’ she replied. ‘We’re trying to figure it out. Thanks for your help, Doctor. I’ll let you get back to sleep.’