Jonathan Kellerman - The Clinic

I phoned the med school crosstown and used my faculty status to get the business office at Women's Hospital. The head clerk there referred me to the billing office, which referred me to the direct Medi-Cal billing office. Finally, someone whose tone implied I should have known without asking informed me that abortions were indeed reimbursable by the state at nine hundred dollars per procedure, not including hospital costs, anesthesia, and other incidentals.

I hung up.

Nine hundred per procedure. And if you were a canny biller, as Cruvic seemed to be, you could throw in things like nursing charges, operating-room costs, supplies, anesthesia, and jack up the reimbursement.

Twenty abortions a week added up to just short of a seven-figure income.

Nice little supplement to the fertility practice.

Implanting fetuses in the rich, removing them from the poor.

There were risks, of course: an antiabortion fanatic lashing out violently. And if the papers got hold of it, bad press: BEVERLY HILLS FERTILITY DOCTOR RUNS NIGHTTIME ABORTION MILL. Pro-lifers would excoriate Cruvic for murdering babies and liberals would wax indignant over class inequality.

And whatever their political bent, Cruvic's fertility patients would shrink from that kind of publicity. And from the fact that their doctor's activities weren't limited to abetting pregnancy- despite the claim on his business card.

But with that kind of money, Cruvic probably figured the risk was worth it.

Off-the-path medical building.

Chains around the clinic parking lot, armed guard.

Had he been greedy and wanted even more?

Bloated billing? Cooking the books?

Hope going along with the fraud?

But Cruvic had paid her only thirty-six thousand a year, a very small chunk of a million-dollar business.

Maybe the thirty-six represented only what she'd reported on her tax returns and there'd been other payments, in cash.

Or had Hope not been a willing partner to fraud and, learning the truth, quit, or threatened to expose Cruvic?

And died because of it?

Then what about Mandy Wright? Her only link to obstetrics, so far, was a terminated pregnancy and a tubal ligation.

Far-fetched, Delaware.

The most likely scenario was that she and Hope had been murdered by a psychopathic stranger and Cruvic, however mercenary and ethically slippery, had nothing to do with it.

Still, I'd promised Milo to check out his credentials, Deborah Brittain would be in class for the next few hours, and the panicked Tessa Bowlby had a day off. Lots of days off, as a matter of fact: enrolled in only two classes, both on Tuesday and Thursday.

Reduced academic load.

Trouble coping?

I'd give her another try, too, but first things first.

Calling the state medical board, I found out no malpractice complaints had been lodged against Milan Cruvic, M.D., nor was his license in jeopardy.

Farther fetched.

I got dressed and drove to school.

At the Biomed Library, I looked Cruvic up in the Directory of Medical Specialists.

B.A., Berkeley- Hope's alma mater, another possible link. They were the same age, too, had graduated in the same class.

Old friends? I read on. M.D., UC San Francisco- once again, studying in the same city as Hope.

Then, she'd come down to L.A. for her clinical training and he'd moved to Seattle for a surgery internship at the University of Washington.

By the book, so far.

But then it got interesting.

He completed only one year of his surgery residency at U of W before taking a leave of absence and spending a year at the Brooke-Hastings Institute in Corte Madera, California.

Then, instead of returning to Washington, he'd transferred specialties from surgery to obstetrics-gynecology, signing on as a first-year resident at Fidelity Medical Center in Carson, California, where he'd finished, passed his boards, and gotten his specialty certification in OB-GYN.

No listing of any postgraduate work in fertility.

That wasn't illegal- an M.D. and a state license allowed any physician to do just about anything medical- but it was surprising, even reckless, because fertility techniques were highly specialized.

Where had Cruvic learned his craft?

The year at the Brooke-Hastings Institute? No, because he'd been just a first-year resident at the time and no reputable institution would take someone for advanced training at that point.

Self-taught?

Cutting corners in a daring and dangerous way?

Was that the real reason he practiced away from the other Beverly Hills doctors?

If so, who sent him referrals?

People who also wanted to skirt the rules?

But maybe there was a simple solution: He'd undergone bona fide training but the fact had been accidentally left off his bio.

Still, you'd think that was the kind of thing he'd be careful to correct. And the directory was updated each year.

Freelance fertility cowboy?

Cutting corners?

Taking on cases no one else would go near?

Something on the fringe…

Perhaps a daring nature was what had attracted Hope to Cruvic.

So different from the stodgy, routine-bound Seacrest.

Old Volvo versus shiny Bentley.

Something on the fringe…

Something gone bad?

Now Hope was dead and Cruvic, as he himself had pointed out, was alive, busy, bouncy, doing God knew what.

But what of Mandy Wright?

What did a scholar and a call girl have in common but gruesome death?

Nothing fit.

I stayed with it, plugging Cruvic's name into every scientific and medical data bank the library offered. No publications, so his year at Brooke-Hastings probably hadn't been for research.

The institute wasn't listed anywhere, either.

By the time I finished, my gut was tight with suspicion, but there was nothing more to do and it was time to find Deborah Brittain.

I spotted her leaving Monroe Hall and heading toward a bike rack.

The photo ID had given no indication of her size.

Six feet tall, lean and big-boned with long, dirty-blond hair and sharp cheekbones. She wore a white polo shirt bearing the University seal, navy shorts, white socks and sneakers, a red mountaineer's backpack.

Her racing bicycle was one of a dozen two-wheelers hitched to a rack in back of the ruby-brick structure. I watched her slip an elastic sweatband over her forehead then remove the chain lock. As she rolled the bike out, I stepped up and introduced myself.

“Yes?” Her blue eyes switched channels, from preoccupied to alarmed. I showed her my ID.

“Professor Devane?” she said in a husky voice. “It sure took a long time.” Her hands tightened around the handlebars. “I've got volleyball practice in half an hour but I want to talk to you- let's walk.”

She guided the bicycle up the walkway, fast enough to make me lengthen my stride.

“I want to tell you,” she said, “that Professor Devane was a truly great woman. A wonderful person. The sicko who killed her should get the death penalty but of course he won't.”

“Why's that?”

“Even if you catch him and he gets convicted they never enforce the law fully.”

She glanced at me without breaking step. “Want to know about Huang?”

“I want to know anything you can tell me.”

“Are you thinking Huang did it?”

“No. We're just talking to everyone associated with the conduct committee.”

“So you think the committee had something to do with it?”

“We don't know much, period, Ms. Brittain.”

“Well, I'm sure people have been bad-mouthing the committee but I think it was a great idea. It saved my life- not literally, but Huang was making my life miserable until Professor Devane put an end to all that.”

She stopped suddenly. Her eyes were wet and the sweatband had slipped down. She shoved it higher and we started moving again. “He used to come up behind me in the library. I'd turn to get a book and he'd be there. Staring, smiling. Suggestive smiles- do you understand?”