Do No Harm

David leaned toward the open passenger window, hands on the sill, his position and the painted Ford LTD making him feel, ridiculously, like a prostitute. "Excuse me."

Jenkins did not look up. "Dr. Spier," he said.

"Mind if I…?" David gestured to the passenger seat.

Still no eye contact. Jenkins jotted something in his pad. "You can sit in the back."

After a moment's hesitation, David opened the rear door and climbed in. The backseat was composed of a solid plastic mold, with no cracks into which suspects could stuff drugs or weapons. A crime alert flier sat on one side, a displeased African American male with FUCK LAPD tattooed across his forehead peering out from the fuzzy photo. David scooted across to the middle and viewed the back of Jenkins's head through the protective Plexiglas shield that separated the front and back seats.

Jenkins had been kind enough to leave the small window open in the Plexiglas shield. A strip of his face peered at David from the rearview mirror, but David could not make out his eyes through his Oakley blades.

"The ICU nurse told me you've had a rough time going in to see your sister, so I wanted to let you know she's making good progress. The skin grafts are taking so far, and plastics is feeling quite confident. She fought off an internal infection pretty well, and-"

"Something tells me you didn't come all the way out here to talk about my sister." Jenkins's voice, deep and resonant, betrayed little emotion.

David realized just how claustrophobic the backseat of a cop car was. The strip of Jenkins's face remained perfectly centered in the rearview mirror. He had mastered silence as a weapon, and David found it a powerful one.

He wasn't sure how to find the balance between condescension and communication. "What happened to your sister was horrible. And I know

… and if there's anything I can ever do… But the patient is a-"

"Patient," Jenkins sneered.

"The suspect is a very sick man. Disturbed."

"Sick enough to wear a fake tattoo to throw off our investigation? Sick enough to use surgical gloves because they leave a less distinctive print than leather gloves? Don't buy the dummy routine, Doctor. Our boy's pretty clever for someone sick in the head."

"People can be smart and still be unbalanced. Imagine how ill you'd have to be to do the kinds of things he's done."

"That doesn't interest me."

"Even if this guy is guilty, he's still got rights. You don't want to give his future attorney any ammunition against the DA, do you?"

Jenkins shifted in his seat and then finally turned his head. David stared back at his own distorted reflection in the broad band of Jenkins's sunglasses. "My sister is blind. She has to barf up into napkins for the rest of her life. Dead skin falls off her face in gray patches. And you're more concerned about the guy who did it."

Across the street, Bronner emerged from the shop, holding two cups of steaming coffee.

"I'm extremely concerned about Nancy. But she isn't my patient anymore. The suspect is."

"Then go back to the hospital and take care of him so we can take him off your hands."

David slid toward the door on the hard plastic seat. "I can't," he said sheepishly.

"Why not?"

"The door handle won't work."

Chapter 24

HER careful arrangement of designer-styled, blond-highlighted hair bounced as she leaned back on the gurney. Her hand, set aglitter by deep maroon fingernails, clutched a cell phone to her ear. Her lips stretched full and amorphous, blown out of proportion by collagen injections. Dark eyeshadow filled the hollows beneath her eyes, where long-vanished tears had deposited it.

"Oh yes," she said into the phone, in a socialite's singsong cadence, "it's been awful. I tried to kill myself this morning… Um-hmm. Prozac, codeine, and a bad Bordeaux. Threw it all up by the time the paramedics arrived. You'll never believe where they brought me. The UCLA emergency room. I was terrified. Thought I'd get doused with alkali on my way through the doors." She picked at a cuticle. "What's that, darling?" She glanced up at the resident at the bed beside hers, drawing blood from another woman. "One of them is, I suppose, in a Billy Baldwin sort of way."

Carson looked up from his chart and nudged David. "Welcome to West

LA."

"Think compassion, Dr. Donalds. Where else do you think a lonely, depressed woman could get this much attention?"

"On Jerry Springer."

David coughed to cover his smile.

Dashiell Nwankwa suddenly filled the wide doorway to Exam Ten. "You rang?" he asked, his booming voice causing Carson to drop the chart he was holding. David walked over to greet Dash as Carson crouched to gather the scattered papers.