Kovac And Liska: The 9th Girl Part 26

The nurse scurried back toward the exam rooms before she could finish the sentence.

Liska glanced off to the side, to the waiting area with its mood lighting and big-screen television quietly playing a travel show depicting someplace tropical. A mix of patients sat in the leather armchairs in varying stages of misery, coughing and sniffling. Several were looking at her. Others were absorbed in their magazines and cell phones.

The door to the exam area opened and the purple-suited nurse stuck her head out.

"The doctor will see you now," she said softly.

Liska followed her down the hall and into the doctor's private office. Iverson, a big, good-looking man in his fifties, had already taken his position behind his impressive desk. He rose from his seat and offered his hand.

"Bob Iverson."

"Sergeant Liska, Homicide," she said, holding her ID out in place of the handshake.

"Homicide?" he said, his brow furrowing. "Are we talking about the same case? Penny Gray? I spoke with her mother, Julia, this morning. I thought this was a missing person case."

"It was." Liska put the envelope with Penny Gray's X-rays on the immaculate desktop.

"I don't like the sound of that," he said. "Please have a seat, Sergeant."

Liska perched on the edge of a chair, back straight. The doctor lowered himself into his cushy executive's chair, his hands on the desktop as if physically bracing himself for bad news.

"Are you telling me Penny Gray is dead?" he asked.

"I'm not at liberty to tell you anything, Dr. Iverson. I need you to answer some questions for me regarding your treatment of Penny back in April of last year."

Iverson frowned. "I'm sure you're aware of patient privacy laws, Sergeant."

"As I am sure you are aware of the laws regarding physicians' needs to report child abuse to the proper authorities."

"Penny isn't abused!" he scoffed.

"Really? Because I had the a.s.sistant chief medical examiner look at these X-rays that were taken here in your office last April, and he tells me this injury is a spiral fracture, a torsion fracture resulting from a twisting of the limb. This is a common injury in cases of physical abuse. But neither the police department nor Family Services has a report on record regarding Penelope Gray."

"Because Penny was not abused," he insisted. "She took a nasty fall, twisting her arm as she came off the bike. There was no reason for me to report the incident. I've known Julia Gray for years. She's a lovely woman."

"Are you Penny's regular physician?" Liska asked.

"No. She's just at the age to switch over from her pediatrician."

"Do you have a pediatrician as part of this practice?"

"Yes."

"And is that pediatrician Penny Gray's doctor?"

"You'll have to ask her mother that question."

"According to the date on these X-rays, this incident happened on a Sat.u.r.day. Most people have accidents on a weekend, they go to an ER," Liska said. "They don't call their family pract.i.tioner."

"This is a concierge practice," Iverson explained. "As you may have noticed when you came in the building, we have an urgent care facility, we have our own lab facilities. We are one-stop shopping for our clients. There was no need for Julia to take Penny to an ER on a spring weekend where they would have sat for hours before being seen."

"And you personally dropped what you were doing on a Sat.u.r.day and came in and saw the girl when presumably she could have been taken care of by the on-call doc in your urgent care clinic?"

"Yes," he said with a defensive edge to his voice. "As I said, I've known Julia for years. Of course I would come in when she called me."

"And you believed the story about the bicycle."

"Why wouldn't I?"

"If you're such good friends with Mrs. Gray, then you're probably aware she and her daughter have a difficult relationship."

"I don't see what that has to do with falling off a bicycle."

"And when you saw the nature of Penny's injury, this didn't raise any questions in your mind?"

"No."

"Seriously? How many spiral fractures do you see in the course of your week, Dr. Iverson?" she asked. "How many fractures do you see at all? You're not an orthopedist, are you?"

"No."

"Yet you felt perfectly comfortable treating an unusual type of fracture."

"I worked in emergency medicine early in my career," he said. "I've treated every kind of fracture there is. Penny's break was clean enough to set and cast. It didn't require a specialist."

"That was very lucky for Penny, considering the nature of the injury," Liska said.

"Yes, it was lucky. Sometimes we get lucky."

"She's not lucky now."

"It's inconceivable that Julia has done something to her daughter," he said.

"Tell me, Dr. Iverson, if you hadn't known Julia Gray, if this had been a stranger and her daughter coming to you with that same injury . . . ?"

Iverson shrugged and sighed impatiently. "The point is moot. I do know Julia. I a.s.sume you've met her. Does she strike you as the kind of woman who would be physically violent with anyone?"

"I've been in this business for a long time, Doctor," Liska said. "I learned my first week on the job not to judge a book by its cover. But let's say for the sake of argument Julia Gray didn't break her daughter's arm. Let's say Penny's father did it, or Julia's boyfriend-"

"Michael? That's absurd!"

"Or one of Penny's boyfriends, or one of the sketchy people she runs with, or someone she encountered that day."

"She in no way indicated she had been attacked," Iverson said.

Liska nodded and rose, picking up the envelope with the X-rays back off the table. "Victims don't want to be victims, Doctor-especially victims of abuse. They often see it as . . . embarra.s.sing . . . shameful . . . They blame themselves. They don't want to admit that someone in their life values them so little or hates them so much. Or they think they won't be believed because maybe their abuser seems above reproach. Which is why we have mandatory reporting laws. I'd be expecting a phone call about that if I were you."

30.

Christina Warner looked up at Kovac with big, liquid, dark eyes, her expression soft and innocent. Her long white-blond hair was like something from a mermaid fantasy-tumbling waves framing her face and falling around her shoulders and down her back. Her complexion was peaches and cream, like an airbrushed photograph, complemented by the baby pink cashmere turtleneck sweater she wore.

"I want to do whatever I can to help find Gray," she said.

"Why is that, Christina?" Kovac asked bluntly. "The way I understand it, the two of you don't get along."

The big eyes blinked. She had expected him to be impressed with her generosity of spirit, but she adjusted to his reaction with ease.

"Well . . . we don't," she admitted. "But that doesn't mean I want something bad to happen to her."

"Why don't the two of you get along?"

"She's jealous," she said simply. "I'm popular and she's not. I have friends and she doesn't. I get along with my dad; she and her mom fight all the time."

"It sucks to be her," Kovac surmised. "How do you get along with Mrs. Gray?"

"Great," she said, smiling-a genuine reaction. "Julia is super-nice. We have fun together."

"You think maybe Penny resents that too-that you get along with her mom and she doesn't?"

"For sure."

"Right. 'Cause how's that supposed to work when your dad and Mrs. Gray get married? Everyone gets along with everyone-except Penny, who gets along with n.o.body."

"Obviously, we have some work to do in that area," Michael Warner said. "But there's no timetable. Julia and I haven't set a date. We're hoping Penny will come around in time."

He sat close beside his daughter with a hand resting rea.s.suringly on her back.

"She makes me angry, but I feel sorry for her, really," Christina said.

"It doesn't sound to me like you were feeling sorry for her that night at the Rock and Bowl," Kovac said. "I've had several people tell me you were making fun of Gray and her poetry and that you and she got into it."

She bowed her head and looked up at him from under impossibly long dark lashes, contrite. "Of course I feel bad about that now. I didn't know she was going to disappear or whatever. I was just so mad at her-"

"Over what?"

"Some stuff she said about me in one of her stupid poems. She read it in front of half the school, practically. It was embarra.s.sing and hurtful and mean."

"Penny is a talented writer," Michael Warner intervened. "She's very good at using words to hurt people, to anger people. Words are her weapons."

"Well," Kovac said, watching him carefully, "she's not big and strong enough to break somebody's arm, after all."

Warner narrowed his eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Everybody feels a need to strike out at some point in their life," Kovac said. "We get angry, we feel helpless, we feel bullied. It's a basic instinct to lash out at the one who hurt us. Right, Doc?"

"Figuratively speaking, I suppose, yes. But-"

"Were you around last spring when Penny broke her arm?"

"She took a bad fall off her bike," Warner said. "Yes, I do remember it. She was my patient at the time."

Kovac sighed and rubbed a hand across his jaw. "I know about the whole patient confidentiality thing and all, but did she ever indicate to you that maybe that really isn't what happened?"

"No. Why?"

"How about to you, Christina? Did you ever hear her say anything about that? Was there any gossip about that? Was Gray maybe hanging out with a rough crowd? A bad boyfriend? Anything like that?"

He watched the girl process the question. "She hangs out with some sketchy people outside of school-or so she says. I've never actually seen her with a boyfriend."

"Do you think someone attacked her?" Michael Warner asked.

"What about a girlfriend?" Kovac asked. "I'm hearing she had decided she was bis.e.xual."

Christina rolled her eyes. "That's her latest thing. She's through with men. Now she's a lesbian or whatever. Be who you are. She's always saying that."

"You don't believe that's who she is? Or you don't like what that means?"

"If that's who she is, then why doesn't she just go hang out with the gay and lesbian kids?" she asked. "Why does she have to throw it in our faces all the time? One minute she's coming on to guys, the next minute she likes girls-"

"What guys was she coming on to? Eric? Jacob? Your guy, Aaron?"

"He's not interested in her," she said firmly. "He can't stand her, actually."

"I don't know," Kovac said. "I was sixteen once. If a girl is coming on to them, sixteen-year-old boys will overlook a lot."

She forced a little laugh and tried to look confident. "Believe me, Aaron isn't interested in Gray, and Gray isn't interested in Aaron."

"Was she interested in you, Christina?"

Michael Warner took exception. "Is this really an appropriate line of questioning?"

"What's appropriate?" Kovac asked, lifting his hands. "Anything that has the potential to help the investigation. No one has to like it. Gray claims to be bis.e.xual, then I have to pursue that angle."

He turned back to Christina. She tried to look offended.

"No!"

"Jessica? Emily? Brittany?"

"No!" she said. She was getting fl.u.s.tered, cheeks blushing beneath the perfect makeup. "I don't even know if she really is into girls. She's probably just saying it to get a reaction. She just likes to mess with people. She's just so, so-"

"Antagonistic." Her father supplied the word. "And manipulative. That's a good point, Christina." He looked to Kovac again. "Penny feels a need to draw attention to herself. She gets the attention, then antagonizes the people giving it to her until they push her away. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. She believes she is unlovable, so she goes around continually trying to prove that point by alienating people."