Bodily Harm: A Novel Read online

  ALSO BY ROBERT DUGONI

  Wrongful Death

  Damage Control

  The Jury Master

  The Cyanide Canary (nonfiction)

  BODILY

  HARM

  A NOVEL

  ROBERT DUGONI

  A TOUCHSTONE BOOK

  Published by Simon & Schuster

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  Touchstone

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by La Mesa Fiction, LLC

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Touchstone hardcover edition May 2010

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  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dugoni, Robert.

  Bodily harm / by Robert Dugoni.

  p. cm.

  I. Title.

  PS3604.U385B63 2010

  813'.6—dc22 2009046051

  ISBN 978-1-4165-9296-9

  ISBN 978-1-4391-0061-5 (ebook)

  To Sam Goldman,

  the “greatest journalism teacher in the West,”

  who taught me to love to write and what it

  means to live each day to the fullest.

  And to my brothers and sisters,

  Aileen, Susie, Bill, Bonnie, Joann, Tom,

  Larry, Sean, and Mike, for giving me the best

  childhood a kid could have ever wanted.

  Death is not the greatest loss in life.

  The greatest loss is what dies

  inside us while we live.

  —Norman Cousins

  BODILY

  HARM

  PROLOGUE

  GUANGZHOU, CHINA

  It hurt to blink.

  The light stabbed at his eyes, shooting daggers of pain to the back of his skull. When he shut them an aurora of black and white spots lingered.

  Albert Payne had never been one to partake liberally in alcohol; not that he was a complete teetotaler either. He’d been hungover a handful of times during his fifty-six years, but those few occasions had been the result of unintended excess, never a deliberate intent to get drunk. So although he had little experience with which to compare it, his pounding head seemed a clear indicator that he had indeed drunk to excess. He’d have to accept that as so, because he could remember little about the prior evening. Each factory owner, along with the local officials in China’s Guangdong Province, had insisted on a reception for Payne and the delegation, no doubt believing their hospitality would ensure a favorable report. Payne recalled sipping white wine, but after three weeks the receptions had blurred together, and he could not separate one from the other.

  Coffee.

  The thought popped into his head and he seemed to recall that caffeine eased a hangover. Maybe so, but locating the magic elixir would require that he stand, dress, leave his hotel room, and ride the elevator to the lobby. At the moment, just lifting his head felt as if it would require a crane.

  Forcing his eyelids open, he followed floating dust motes in a stream of light to an ornate ceiling of crisscrossing wooden beams and squares of decorative wallpaper. He blinked, pinched the bridge of his nose, then looked again, but the view had not changed. A cold sweat enveloped him. The ceiling in his room at the Shenzhen Hotel had no beams or wallpaper; he’d awakened the previous three mornings to a flat white ceiling.

  He shifted his gaze. Cheap wood paneling and a dingy, burnt-orange carpet: this was not his hotel room and, by simple deduction, this could not be his bed.

  He slid his hand along the sheet, fingertips brushing fabric until encountering something distinctly different, soft and warm. His heart thumped hard in his chest. He turned his head. Dark hair flowed over alabaster shoulders blemished by two small moles. The woman lay on her side, the sheet draped across the gentle slope of her rounded hip.

  Starting to hyperventilate, Payne forced deep breaths from his diaphragm. Now was not the time to panic. Besides, rushing from the room was not an option, not in his present condition, and not without his clothes. Think! The woman had not yet stirred, and judging by her heavy breathing she remained deep asleep, perhaps as hungover as he, perhaps enough that if he didn’t panic, Payne might be able to sneak out without waking her, if he could somehow manage to sit up.

  He forced his head from the pillow and scanned along the wall to the foot of the bed, spotted a shoe, and felt a moment of great relief that just as quickly became greater alarm. The shoe was not his brown Oxford loafer but a square-toed boot.

  Payne bolted upright, causing the room to spin and tilt off-kilter, bringing fleeting, blurred images like a ride on a merry-go-round. The images did not clear until the spinning slowed.

  “Good morning, Mr. Payne.” The man sat in an armless, slatted wood chair. “You appear to be having a difficult start to your day.” Eyes as dark as a crow, the man wore his hair parted in the middle and pulled back off his forehead in a ponytail that extended beyond the collar of his black leather coat.

  “Would you care for some water?”

  Not waiting for a response, the man stood. At a small round table in the corner of the room he filled a glass from a pitcher, offering it to Payne. If this were a bad dream, it was very real. Payne hesitated, no longer certain that his hangover was alcohol induced.

  The man motioned with the glass and arched heavy eyebrows that accentuated the bridge of a strong forehead. Dark stubble shaded his face. “Please. I assure you it’s clean, relatively speaking.”

  Payne took the glass but did not immediately drink, watching as the man returned to the chair, and crossed his legs, before again pointing to the glass. This time Payne took a small sip. The glass clattered against his teeth and water trickled down his chin onto the sheet. When the man said nothing, Payne asked, “What do you want?”

  “Me? I want nothing.”

  “Then why are you—”

  The man raised a single finger. “My employer, however, has several requests.”

  “Your employer? Who is your employer?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to divulge that information.”

  The woman emitted a small moan before her chest resumed its rhythmic rise and fall. Payne looked back to the man, an idea occurring. “I’ve been married for more than twenty years; my wife will never believe this.”

  The man responded with a blank stare. “Believe what?”

  Payne gestured to the woman. “Her. It’s not going to work.”

  “Ah.” The man nodded. “You believe that I am here to blackmail you with photographs or videotapes of the two of you fornicating.”

  “It isn’t going to work,” Payne repeated.
<
br />   “Let me first say that it is refreshing to hear in this day when more than fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce that yours remains strong. Good for you. But look around you, Mr. Payne; do you see a camera or a video recorder anywhere in the room?”

  Payne did not.

  “Now, as I said, my employer has several requests.” For the next several minutes the man outlined those requests. Finishing, he asked, “Do we have an understanding?”

  Confused, Payne shook his head. “But you said you weren’t here to blackmail me.”

  “I said I was not here to blackmail you with photographs or videotapes. And as you have already educated me, such an attempt would not be productive.”

  “Then why would I do what you’re asking?”

  “Another good question.” The man pinched his lower lip. His brow furrowed. “It appears I will need something more persuasive.” He paused. “Can you think of anything?”

  “What?”

  “Something that would make a man like you acquiesce to my employer’s demands?”

  “There’s nothing,” Payne said. “This isn’t going to work. So if I could just have my clothes back.”

  “Nothing?” The man seemed to give the problem greater consideration, then snapped his fingers. “I have it.”

  Payne waited.

  “Murder.”

  The word struck Payne like a dart to the chest. “Murder? I haven’t murdered anyone.”

  With the fluidity of a dancer the man stood, a gun sliding into his extended left hand from somewhere beneath his splayed black coat, and the back of the woman’s head exploded, blood splattering Payne about the face and neck.

  “Now you have.”

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  ONE UNION SQUARE BUILDING

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  The call from King County Superior Court Judge John Rudolph’s bailiff had sent the Law Offices of David Sloane into overdrive. Sloane juggled his briefcase as he slipped on his suit jacket and hurried down the hall.

  The jury had reached a verdict.

  “Give ’em hell!” John Kannin shouted.

  Sloane rushed into the elevator lobby, cinching the knot of his tie. One of the red triangles above the bank of elevators lit and a bell sounded.

  “David!” Carolyn shuffled into the lobby. “Your phone.” She rolled her eyes as she handed his cell to him. “I swear you’d forget your head if it wasn’t glued to your shoulders.”

  Sloane wedged his briefcase between the shutting doors. “Have you reached Tom yet?” He and Tom Pendergrass had tried the medical malpractice action against a local pediatrician for the death of a six-year-old boy. Following closing arguments, Pendergrass had gone straight to his athletic club for a much-needed workout.

  “A woman at the front desk said she would look for him. How many redheads could be working out on a StairMaster?”

  The doors shuddered, and the elevator buzzed. “Tell him to meet me in the courtroom. And tell him not to be late.” The buzzing intensified. “You called the McFarlands?”

  Carolyn put her hands on her hips. “No. I thought I’d use mental telepathy. Just get going before that thing blows a circuit and plummets. I can’t afford to be looking for a new job in this economy.”

  When the elevator reached the lobby, Sloane jogged across the salmon-colored marble, his mind again churning over the evidence and hoping that the jurors had understood his arguments. Dr. Peter Douvalidis, for forty years a respected Seattle pediatrician, had chosen not to treat Austin McFarland for flulike symptoms: diarrhea, vomiting, and high fevers. Subpoenaed medical records indicated that Douvalidis had taken a throat swab and sent the boy home with instructions that the McFarlands keep him hydrated and return if the fever didn’t break. That night the boy had slipped into a coma and the McFarlands rushed Austin to the emergency room, where the attending doctor took a blood sample and sent it to the lab, suspecting a bacterial infection. Despite the doctor’s efforts, Austin died. The next day the throat swab came back negative for the flu but the blood cultures came back positive for septicemia, a bacteria in the bloodstream, usually from an infection in some other part of the body. Sloane would later learn that septicemia manifests itself in symptoms similar to the flu and, as in the case of Austin McFarland, may progress to hypotension and death.

  The McFarlands’ focus had been on their bereavement. It was not until six months later that they approached Tom Pendergrass, whom they had met through a mutual friend, to determine if Douvalidis was liable in their son’s death. Though expert doctors retained by Pendergrass opined that, given the severity of the boy’s symptoms, Douvalidis should have immediately treated Austin with broad-spectrum antibiotics for a presumed bacterial infection, Sloane had never felt totally comfortable with suing the doctor. The experts’ opinions seemed much like Monday-morning quarterbacking. He had let Pendergrass handle the case, deducing that it would settle. But Douvalidis’s medical-malpractice carrier had refused, and on the eve of trial the McFarlands told Sloane they wanted him to try the case.

  As Sloane reached the revolving glass doors he heard someone call his name.

  “Mr. Sloane?”

  Perhaps in his early twenties, the man had the youthful, unkempt appearance made popular during Seattle’s grunge phase in the 1990s, a fad that continued to linger. The tail of his shirt protruded over baggy jeans, and an oversize, olive green jacket hung heavily from his shoulders hiding the manila file until the man pulled a document from it, papers spilling onto the floor.

  “I have something to show you.” He knelt to recover the scattered pages.

  Sloane had become a fixture on local and national talk shows since his verdict against the government on behalf of the wife of a national guardsman killed in Iraq that had led to the forced resignation of the secretary of defense. His increased exposure had caused his caseload to explode; everyone wanted to hire “the lawyer who does not lose,” as one national publication referred to him.

  “I’m sorry I don’t have time to talk.” Sloane pushed through the revolving doors and kept a brisk pace past the rock wall sculpture and down wide concrete steps, hoping to discourage his pursuer, but the man hurried along beside him, talking as he continued to fumble in his file.

  “This will only take a minute.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have a minute.” Sloane reached the corner of Sixth and University but the light changed to red, and the pedestrians in front of him abruptly stopped. Nobody jaywalked in Seattle. Sloane would have broken the rule, but traffic emptying from the I-5 freeway onto University was heavy.

  The din of the cars nearly drowned out the man’s voice. “If I could just show you this article it would explain—”

  The light changed. Sloane stepped from the curb, leaving the young man searching his file. He made it halfway across when the man shouted.

  “The doctor did not kill that boy.”

  Sloane stopped. Pedestrians maneuvered to avoid him. Walking back to the curb, Sloane saw that the man held a photocopy of an article from The Seattle Times reporting on the medical malpractice case.

  “How would you know that?” Sloane asked.

  “Because I did.”

  LAURELHURST

  WASHINGTON

  MALCOLM FITZGERALD EXITED his navy blue Bentley Brookland, a gift to celebrate his recent promotion, tugged the French cuffs of his shirt past the sleeves of his blazer, and adjusted the lapels. His wife had selected the jacket, and had it hand-tailored to accommodate his tall, slender frame. She liked him in blue, which she said better accentuated the gray at his temples and his fair complexion. For the board meeting that morning, Fitzgerald had decided on a simple white shirt with a lavender pinstripe that matched the color of his tie.

  He retrieved the wrapped package from the passenger seat and followed the stone path between English boxwood hedges into a manicured backyard. The lawn spread like a green blanket to the slate blue waters of Lake Washington, the southern view of
Mount Rainier’s snowcapped summit interrupted only by the 520 bridge spanning east to west.

  The wrought-iron bench had been positioned just beneath the vines of a willow tree at the lake’s edge, and faced the finger dock where Sebastian Kendall moored his seventy-two-foot yacht and fire-engine red float plane.

  Fitzgerald nodded to the male nurse and stepped to where Kendall sat, his eyes closed, his body hunched over the silver horse head mounted atop his cane. Though it had been only a week since Fitzgerald’s last visit, Kendall had physically deteriorated. He wore blue hospital scrub pants and a white T-shirt beneath a terry cloth bathrobe, his initials embroidered in gold on the breast pocket. The radiation and chemotherapy treatments had thinned a full head of hair to white wisps. Once a young-looking seventy-two and perhaps 180 pounds, Kendall now looked as if a breeze off the lake would knock him over.

  “Sebastian?”

  Kendall opened his eyes.

  “I’m sorry to disturb.” Fitzgerald had arranged the meeting earlier that morning.

  “Just resting my eyes.” Kendall’s voice, hoarse and guttural, had become nearly unrecognizable. He motioned for Fitzgerald to sit beside him. “How is Melody?”

  Fitzgerald did not bother to correct that his wife’s name was Erin. “She sends her regards, and her prayers.”

  “And your daughters?”

  “Growing like weeds and keeping us both as busy as ever; Sarah has it in her head that she wants to take tae kwon do, but I don’t know how with all the soccer and ballet.”

  “They grow up fast,” Kendall said, though he had no children and had never married.

  “How are you feeling today?”

  Kendall shrugged. “I’m still here.”

  Fitzgerald did not patronize his mentor by saying things like “You’re going to beat this” or “You’ll be here a lot longer.” They were beyond that. The most sophisticated treatments had failed to slow the metastatic melanoma’s destructive path.