30
Laurie felt underdressed as she emerged from the Fisher Blake elevator wearing jeans and an NYPD T-shirt, but it was Sunday afternoon. Leo had picked up Timmy and taken him to Alex’s apartment to watch the Yankees–Red Sox game. She smiled at the thought of the three men in her life spending family time together. This freed her up for an unexpected work session.
Ryan was waiting for her at her office door with a manila folder. “I hope I’m not ruining your whole day,” he said. “In retrospect, it could have waited until tomorrow.”
Ryan had called her cell thirty minutes earlier, excited about something he had discovered while looking into the malpractice claims that had been filed against Martin Bell. Laurie was often annoyed by Ryan’s tendency to insist that she drop everything to listen to whatever was on his mind, but this time was different. She had specifically asked him to get a better grasp on the lawsuits that were pending at the time of Martin’s death, and she had never known Ryan to work on a weekend.
She motioned for him to sit down. Ryan interpreted the gesture as an invitation for him to plop into her favorite armchair.
“There were three lawsuits,” Ryan began. “All claimed that Martin overprescribed pain medication to patients who died. Not a great narrative considering his reputation as a miracle worker. I always suspected that book was a little too good to be true.”
Laurie recalled the headline in the New York Times the morning after Martin’s death: THE DOCTOR WHO CURED PAIN IS KILLED. The article went on to solidify his legacy as the man who revolutionized pain management, trading prescription drugs and surgical intervention for more holistic approaches like meditation and stress reduction.
When Martin published his best-selling book, The New Pain Doctrine, his career began to sprint. He left NYU’s Neurology Department, started his own practice, and committed himself to advocating for homeopathic remedies, physical therapy, and psychological approaches to physical pain. He was a frequent guest on television talk shows, freely condemning the culture of scalpel-happy surgeons and prescription-pushing physicians. If those lawsuits had become public, he could have gone from celebrity guru to sham doctor in the length of a single news cycle.
Laurie immediately wondered if there might be a connection between the lawsuits and his murder.
“I asked one of my old buddies to look into the plaintiffs to see if any of them had criminal histories.” Ryan flipped through the pages inside one of the folders and pulled out a stapled packet. Laurie, surprised by Ryan’s initiative, accepted the papers he set in front of her. “One woman, Allison Taylor, claims she got addicted to OxyContin after seeing Dr. Bell to manage bone cancer pain. Turns out she had a serious record of traffic violations.”
“Not much of a connection between being a bad driver and being a murderer,” Laurie reminded him as she leaned back in her chair, folding her arms across her chest.
“True, which is why I’m more interested in another guy, George Naughten. His sixty-seven-year-old mother had chronic pain after a fender bender on the Long Island Expressway. She was rear-ended by a texting teenager. I thought at first maybe it was that Allison Taylor lady.” Ryan chuckled to himself.
Laurie nodded, hoping to move the story along.
“So Mom is seeing doctor after doctor with no relief,” Ryan continued, diving into story mode. “After two years, she hears about Dr. Bell on Good Morning America, and decides she has to see him. He didn’t accept Medicaid, so she had to pay out of pocket to make it happen. She even took out a line of credit on her house to pay for it. Nothing worked at first, but Bell eventually came up with a drug cocktail that kept her pain free. According to the lawsuit, the drugs turned her into a zombie, but at least she wasn’t in physical agony. Then George finds Mom unresponsive. The medical examiner says it was an overdose. George swore that, in addition to the drugs Bell prescribed through the pharmacy, he was also dispensing pills directly to her in the office.”
Laurie stretched in her chair as she mulled over the lawsuit’s allegations. “And you said George has a criminal record of some kind?” Laurie asked.
“Just wait,” Ryan said, putting up a hand. He was milking the story’s unfolding. “That’s where things really get interesting. A year before Dr. Bell was murdered, George had a restraining order issued against him by a twenty-year-old kid named Connor Bigsby, which he violated.” He pointed to the police report he had laid out in front of her.
Laurie did the quick math in her head. “I was picturing George as older, given his mother’s age.”
“Thirty-five at the time, forty-one today. So, yes, I was a little curious about what brought him into contact with a twenty-year-old. I requested the transcripts from his trial for violating the criminal court order.” Ryan excitedly pushed a new set of papers in front of her. “Want to take a guess at the connection?” he asked.
Laurie smiled, impressed. She rarely saw Ryan’s strengths, but now it was clear that he would have been talented in the courtroom. “Was Connor Bigsby the driver of the other car involved in his mother’s accident?”
Ryan raised a knowing eyebrow. “Ah, good theory, right? But it’s twistier than that. The driver of the car was actually a young woman who moved to Texas to start college shortly after the accident. Connor Bigsby was the friend who was texting her while she was behind the wheel.”
“That’s crazy,” Laurie said, staring into the transcripts from George’s trial. “That was enough for George to blame him for his mother’s accident? Seems like he missed a step in the logic there.”
Ryan pointed to a section of text that he had highlighted. “Check this out. The protective order was issued after George showed up repeatedly at Connor’s job at a sporting goods store. He would berate him, call him reprehensible, say he should be in jail for assault—it was full-fledged harassment. And then one day, George waited in his car outside the store and sped past Connor, apparently just missing him. Connor said George would have run him over if he hadn’t leapt out of the way. Hence the court order.”
“Why wouldn’t he have been charged with attempted murder?” Laurie asked.
“The DA probably didn’t think they could prove he had intent to hurt the kid, let alone kill him. But they used all the other harassment as evidence to get a court order requiring him to stay at least a hundred feet away from the kid. He couldn’t even manage to do that. Connor’s mother caught him parked across the street, watching their house. She called the cops and he was nabbed for violating the court order. But get this.” Ryan flipped to another page of the transcript, this one marked with a yellow Post-it. “George called a psychiatrist in his defense. The shrink testified that George goes through obsessive phases. Apparently it’s par for the course for stalkers to transfer their obsession onto others. The judge sentenced him to lengthy probation and warned him that if he violated, he would go to prison.”
“I just can’t believe he connected his mother’s injury to a kid sitting at home texting his friend,” Laurie said, thinking aloud. “If he’s willing to make that kind of leap, I can only imagine how he felt about the doctor who prescribed his mother the pills she OD’d on.”
“We should talk to him, right?”
Usually Laurie hated it when Ryan proposed that “we” do something, but he had earned the right to be involved in the research this time. “You want to set it up?” she asked.
“I’m on it,” Ryan said enthusiastically. “But wait, there’s one more thing I have to tell you. As of four years before Martin’s murder, George Naughten was the registered owner of a Smith and Wesson nine-millimeter pistol, the kind used to kill Dr. Bell.”
“Wow. I wonder if we can ask him to make the gun available. We could get the police to test the ballistics.”
Ryan rose from the armchair. “That’s extremely unlikely. The DA’s office insisted he turn the gun over as part of his sentence for violating the protective order, but his lawyer came to court claiming it was stolen in a burglary two months earlier. So instead of handing over the gun, they presented a police report that said it was stolen along with some of his mother’s jewelry. There’s no way to be sure though. For all we know, George made up the fact that the gun was stolen so he’d be free to use it later.”
Laurie thanked Ryan for all the hard work as he left her office. Once she was alone, she began reading the pages of police reports and trial transcripts, paying extra attention to the passages Ryan had marked.
Had the police been so focused on Kendra that they had failed to consider George?
Her thoughts drifted back to the fact that Kendra Bell had been meeting a mystery man at the Beehive bar in the days leading up to her husband’s murder. She flipped through the pages Ryan had given her, searching for a booking photo, but found none. Was it possible she had conspired with a man who had his own grievances against her husband?
She didn’t know if George Naughten was a murderer, the Beehive man, or just a creep with some psychological hang-ups, but she knew she had a new name to add to their list of potential suspects.
She got up from her desk, walked to the whiteboard at the other end of her office, and picked up a red dry-erase marker. By the time she was done, the entire board was filled with ink, documenting the possible links between all the parties. Kendra. The unidentified stranger she met at a dive bar. Her dermatologist boss who might still be carrying a torch. The disgruntled son of a deceased patient. Even the junior senator from New York, whom Laurie was scheduled to interview the following afternoon.
Her cell phone pinged. There was a text from Ryan. George will meet with us. I’m on phone with him now. Tomorrow at 10 work for you?
It would be a busy day, but she could handle it. She confirmed with a yes and added the appointment to her calendar.
I still have so much to do, she thought, her attention returning to the whiteboard. But the killer’s right here, on this board. I feel it. And whoever you are, I’m going to find you.