Doctored Death Read online

  Doctored Death

  A Kenzie Kirsch Medical Thriller #2

  P.D. Workman

  Copyright © 2021 by P.D. Workman

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN: 9781774681114 (IS Hardcover)

  ISBN: 9781774681107 (IS Paperback)

  ISBN: 9781774681121 (IS Large Print)

  ISBN: 9781774681077 (KDP Paperback)

  ISBN: 9781774681084 (Kindle)

  ISBN: 9781774681091 (ePub)

  Sign up for my mailing list at pdworkman.com and get Gluten-Free Murder for free!

  * * *

  To nurturers, both those in

  lab coats and those in fur coats

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Bonus material

  Mailing List

  Preview of Dosed to Death

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Also by P.D. Workman

  About the Author

  1

  Will awoke in a dark room. He couldn’t remember where he was. He wasn’t sure what had woken him up, but something was wrong. Something was definitely wrong. He sat up and looked around, straining his eyes in the darkness. His breathing was irregular and he had a difficult time swallowing. Was he sick? He must be sick. It looked something like a hospital room.

  He needed to talk to someone and find out what was going on. He slid his feet out from under the covers and put them on the floor. It was carpeted rather than tiled like a hospital room normally was.

  He realized as he slid out of the warm spot he’d occupied on the bed that he was wet.

  Something was definitely wrong. A grown man didn’t wet the bed.

  His legs were wobbly and weak. He held on to the bed as he tried to push himself upright. The room lurched around him. He couldn’t find his balance.

  He needed to get help. Someone outside the room could help him. If he could just make it to the door and out into the hallway.

  He felt for the wall to steady himself. He kept banging his legs against furniture as he made his way around the room. A couple of times, he fell to his knees and it was a struggle to get back up again. Eventually, he decided it was easier to crawl along the floor than it was to walk.

  If he just knew where he was going.

  He banged his head against something hard. It sent his brain spinning. Blackness gathered closer in to him. A warm trickle ran down his temple. As he lay on the carpet, giving in to the hopelessness of the situation, a line of light appeared across the room. It was too bright, making him squint. The line grew into an elongated rectangle. A partially open doorway?

  Will was relieved. Someone was there. Someone had come to check on him and they would tell him what was wrong and help him back to bed where he could rest his head.

  But it wasn’t a nurse that came in to see to him. He felt a cold nose and warm snout against his hand and arm. A dog. It moved to his face and sniffed and breathed its warm breath on him, investigating his face, licking him in greeting and cleaning away the blood.

  He murmured words to it. He didn’t know the animal’s name, but it brought him comfort to have another living being there with him. He wasn’t alone.

  The dog barked a couple of times. That would bring help. Then it lay down alongside him. It was warm and soft.

  Will closed his eyes and breathed out.

  2

  Kenzie was awakened by the insistent beeping of her clock. She reached over to turn it off, forcing her eyes open. Friday. And she had the weekend off, provided nothing untoward happened that required her at the Medical Examiner’s office. One more day. Saturday she could sleep in. She sat up, hoping that would help to wake her enough to get her day going. She ran her fingers through her wildly curly dark hair to push it away from her face.

  She felt the bed beside her to see if Zachary were there, but she knew he wouldn’t be. It would have been more than rare for him to still be in bed when she woke up. It had only happened once or twice in the months Zachary had been sleeping there. After the assault, it had been different. His sleep patterns had become completely erratic and he was frequently unable to get out of bed or to keep from falling asleep where he sat on the couch or in front of the computer. But he was back to his normal routine, and that meant that he was up before she was. Sometimes hours before.

  Kenzie pushed herself to her feet and staggered to the ensuite bathroom. She went to the bathroom and then started the shower. She rubbed her hands over her face and looked at herself in the mirror while she waited for the water to warm up. A cold shower might wake her up faster, but she preferred her creature comforts; she wasn’t getting in until it started to steam.

  After a quick shower, Kenzie tidied her spiraling hair into some order, put on her makeup, including the red lipstick that would have to be reapplied after breakfast. But she loved the way it looked, so she put it on anyway. She pulled on her usual work uniform. A blouse and slacks topped with a short blazer. Comfortable shoes, since she would be on her feet much of the day. Then she left the bedroom and went down the hall to the living room and kitchen area to see how her partner was.

  “Morning, Zachary.”

  He didn’t look up from his computer.

  Kenzie hadn’t picked Zachary Goldman for his looks. He was a small, slender man with close-cropped black hair. He had been feeling pretty good over the summer, but she thought he might be losing weight again. His cheeks, which had filled in since his last depressive cycle, looked a little thin and his eye sockets hollow. He hadn’t shaved yet and might not. He frequently kept a scruffy three days’ growth of beard. It made him look like a homel
ess man. Intentionally so. People looked away from him, discounted him, which made his surveillance jobs much easier.

  The reason Kenzie was with him was because he was kind and cared about people and he made her laugh. He was also one of the few people she could discuss her job at the Medical Examiner’s Office with. He was interested in the medical mysteries she helped to solve, not disgusted by them.

  There weren’t a lot of people she could look at autopsy photos with over dinner.

  “Zachary.” Kenzie leaned over his shoulder and gave him a peck on the cheek.

  He gave a small start and looked at her. He smiled. “Oh, you’re up.” He stretched and massaged his neck. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “Up and dressed and ready for breakfast,” she pointed out, in case the private investigator didn’t notice these clues. “Are you ready for something to eat?”

  He stood. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you in the shower or I would have put some coffee on.”

  “It won’t take long.” Kenzie picked up a couple of mugs from the side table, one empty and one half-full of lukewarm or cold coffee. Zachary was pretty good about keeping them away from his computer to prevent any accidental spills. Not so great at remembering to pick them up again later.

  She carried them into the kitchen and, after dumping the one in the sink, put them into the dishwasher. She started the coffee maker and put a couple of pieces of bread into the toaster.

  Zachary went to the fridge and got out the margarine and marmalade for her. They moved around each other, used to the flow of the morning routine. Kenzie put a granola bar in front of Zachary’s chair. His meds made eating in the morning difficult, but he could usually manage one of the chocolate chip granola bars, and the doctor said that anything he could get down was better than nothing.

  They both sat down once the coffee was finished brewing and the toast popped.

  “How did you sleep?” Kenzie asked. She couldn’t remember him getting up.

  Zachary had a sip of the hot coffee and started to unwrap the granola bar. “Not the best night. Restless. But I got a few hours in.”

  “Good. I didn’t hear you up.”

  He nodded. “I tried to be quiet. Don’t like you to be tired at work.”

  “I know. But if you need me...”

  He gave her a smile. The one he always gave when he was comparing her reaction to how his ex-wife Bridget would have treated him. Criticizing him from disturbing her beauty rest instead of inviting him to wake her up if he needed her. The bemused smile that said he wasn’t sure he deserved to be treated so kindly.

  Zachary broke off a corner of the granola bar and put it in his mouth. “Think you’ll be busy today?”

  “Things have been quiet lately. I just don’t know if that means they are going to continue to be quiet or we are building up to something big.”

  “Hopefully quiet. But not too quiet. Enough that you won’t be bored. But no mass murders.”

  “Exactly,” Kenzie agreed, taking a couple of bites of her marmalade toast. “I don’t think there’s any need to worry about me getting bored. People aren’t going to stop dying.”

  3

  Kenzie arrived at the Medical Examiner’s Office and went immediately to work, checking over any calls that had come in during the night and making sure that any remains which had been brought in while the night crew was on had been properly logged in and had all the necessary reports attached. She glanced over her email inbox and took a quick peek at Dr. Wiltshire’s as well to make sure there was nothing hot that needed to be dealt with right away.

  After squaring away those systems, she took a quick walk through the suite of rooms that comprised the Medical Examiner’s Office, making sure that nothing was out of place. Dr. Wiltshire liked his desk left just-so. He didn’t like to come in to find sticky notes or pink phone messages all over it, attempts by the police or other city employees to end-run the proper procedures and get their case in front of him next or ask questions outside of the proper protocol.

  While there were proper procedures for everything, people were lazy and didn’t always follow them. She and Dr. Wiltshire didn’t want to end up with remains or tests not correctly logged in, or the opposite, disappearing without having been properly logged out. Dr. Wiltshire had seen it happen in other ME offices, and he ran a tight ship.

  All of her housekeeping complete, Kenzie returned to her desk and started to sort incoming emails, responding where necessary, filing and printing lab reports that had come in, and forwarding messages to Dr. Wiltshire or other employees.

  Dr. Wiltshire arrived, Starbucks cup in one hand and briefcase in the other. “Morning, Kenzie.”

  “Good morning, doctor. I’ve opened files for a couple of new arrivals. The John Doe that the police consulted you on last night. He’s already in storage waiting for you. And we had a call from Champlain House. One of their residents was found deceased this morning. A Willis Cartwright. He is on his way in.”

  “Good. Any concerns?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Just an unattended death. He was in good health up until a couple of days ago. They had started running some tests but hadn’t made any determination yet. He was eighty-seven.”

  Dr. Wiltshire nodded and sipped his travel cup of coffee. “I’ll look at him after the John Doe, then. That is more pressing, since the police are hoping for an ID.”

  “Okay. The file is on your desk. I filled in what I could on the intake.”

  Since Dr. Wiltshire had attended the scene of death during the night, Kenzie didn’t know all the details. He would need to fill in what he had observed and make sure that all police and witness statements were present and accounted for.

  Kenzie hoped she would be able to scrub in for at least part of the postmortems. While much of her job at the ME’s office was administrative, she was a fully qualified doctor and was trying to get enough experience to someday be a Medical Examiner herself.

  There was a lot of paperwork to manage. Far from heralding the arrival of the paperless office, email had only served to amplify the amount of paper that flowed through the ME’s office. There was a never-ending supply of lab reports, police reports, interoffice correspondence, and research that piled up on each file, in addition to what Dr. Wiltshire dictated during the postmortem or filled out on his computer as he evaluated each case.

  But Kenzie managed to get it under control in time to assist on the postmortem of Willis Cartwright, the man from the seniors’ independent living center.

  Dr. Wiltshire had done the preliminaries and was gowned up. Kenzie picked up the file and added the report she had received from the nursing home concerning Cartwright’s health and death. She summarized aloud to Dr. Wiltshire before donning the last of her protective gear.

  “Mr. Willis Cartwright, age eighty-seven, was discovered dead in his room this morning at Champlain House. He was on the floor. He has a laceration on his head. They believe that he got up in the night, disoriented, and hit his head before passing out. The body was cold and there were no signs of life. Dr. Archibald was on site and declared him.”

  “Medications at the time of his death?”

  “Blood pressure... NSAID... antidepressant.”

  “What was the blood pressure prescription?”

  Kenzie summarized it for him. Dr. Wiltshire nodded. “You said this morning that his health had taken a downturn the last few days?”

  “Staff had noticed an increase in confusion and emotional lability. He was having more problems than usual with getting around. Wasn’t eating much at mealtimes. They thought maybe he was fighting a virus. It didn’t appear to be anything serious.”

  “What was his mental acuity before this?”

  Kenzie scanned the report from the nursing home for details. “He was in the independent living quarters. No significant cognitive issues.” She turned the page. “They have a living skills sheet that they fill out to indicate what level of help the resident needs with each task. He is at the i
ndependent end for all of them, able to feed and wash himself, change his clothes. Needed some assistance with shaving. Had his pills pre-portioned for him.”

  Wiltshire nodded. “Anything else?”

  “Not offhand. We can review it in more detail later, but it seems like this was unexpected. Other than his age being a factor.”

  “Well, let’s see what we can find.”

  Kenzie put on her mask, face shield, and gloves and approached the table. Dr. Wiltshire pulled the cover down to Mr. Cartwright’s navel.

  “George washed the body earlier. He noted that the deceased had urinated, probably perimortem, since the clothing was not wet in the same areas as show lividity.”

  Kenzie translated this in her head to tell Zachary later if he asked for details on the autopsy. The urine had flowed to one area of Cartwright’s clothing due to gravity. But the blood in his body had been pulled to another location by gravity after death. It was a good catch by George, showing that Cartwright wasn’t just wet because his sphincters had released on death.