Likely to Die by Linda Fairstein Page A

join the neurosurgery department, and eventually took it over. Quite a plum for a woman doc. Add to that the distinction of an endowed chair at the medical college. Well respected as an academic, not only a practitioner. Divorced before coming over here. No kids. The husband, Geoffrey Dogen, is out of the picture. Also a physician; met Gemma in medical school. Remarried in ‘91, and his young bride has him trekking in the Himalayas this very week. They live in London and from some of the letters I found in Dogen’s apartment, still have a pretty nice relationship. He’s due back next week, so we’ll need to talk to him and see what he knows about her personal life, but he’s certainly not a suspect.”
     The Chief wasn’t engaged yet. His eyes were still fixed on the tube and as usual he seemed oblivious to the fact that the cigarette in his mouth had burned so far down that it was about to be extinguished by his saliva. Then he would automatically reach into his pack and light up the next one, as we had all seen him do thousands of times.
     Wallace continued. “Dogen lived on Beekman Place, walking distance from the hospital. Doorman building, high rent, large one-bedroom with a terrace overlooking the river. George Zotos is still over there now. There’s tons of papers to go through. Lady was like a real pack rat with her files, so it’s hard to tell if there’ll be anything useful or not. But it’s the same as her office—not a lot of signs of a personal life. Most of the photos are old family shots from her childhood or pictures of herself getting degrees and awards.”
     McGraw’s mouth opened to exchange cigarettes. “Find any neighbors or doormen with gossip?”
     “Guy on the door confirms the erratic schedule. Back and forth to the hospital, lots of airport trips, jogging along the river early in the morning and often around sundown. Very few visitors. Occasionally, some sleep-over parties with a guy—with different guys, actually—but no names that he could remember. And so far, next-door neighbors were no help at all. One couple just moved in two months ago, the ones on the other side weren’t home all day, and the building canvass is still going on.”
     Mercer flipped his pad to the next page. “We started the location check, Loo—looking for other crimes in the medical center itself, but I’m not going to have computer results on all that ‘til sometime tomorrow. Alex probably knows more about those things than I do at this point.
     “On the professional side, we’ve got all her colleagues lined up for interviews the rest of this week. Neurosurgery’s a really small department—we’ll get through most of them by the weekend. The short version we’re getting is, she was no Mother Teresa but didn’t seem to have any obvious enemies, either. A tough taskmaster, but she’d have to be—it’s a specialty where a nanofraction of a millimeter is the difference between a patient’s life and death.
     “My other piece was checking for similar cases in major cities on the East Coast. Washington Metro had two docs shot and killed in parking lots leaving their offices, a month apart. Both males, both seemed to be robberies, looking for drugs and prescription pads. Bullets match. No suspects. One of Philly’s private hospitals had a patient—get this, a quadriplegic—raped by a junkie who broke in during the night to steal hypodermic needles, but he was caught by a nurse on rounds before he dismounted. The Boston cops didn’t know of anything, but I expect a call back in a day or two. That’s all I’ve got for you, Chief.”
     McGraw grunted and Peterson nodded to Chapman to move to the easel. Mercer joined me at the table while Mike rose to speak.
     He picked up the black marker that hung on a string from the top of the sketch pad, humming the theme music from theTwilight Zone TV show and launching into his best imitation of Rod Serling. “Good evening. You are about to enter a