Fifteen Times a Killer by Alan McDermott

Author:Alan McDermott [McDermott, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-02-07T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

“I knew there was something,” Jess said, though there was no one around to hear her. She was sitting up in bed, the laptop on her knees and a gallon of ice cream on the nightstand next to her.

Her initial search for Miriam Crane had revealed nothing other than her LinkedIn profile and a few pieces in medical journals relating to programs her hospital had implemented. It was only when she searched for the hospital that she found something.

An online news article, dated four months prior to Thomas Crane’s disappearance, told of a heavily pregnant African-American woman named Chloe Jackson, who’d collapsed while walking near Angel Rise Hospital. A passer-by had alerted medical staff inside the building, and she’d been taken in and diagnosed with eclampsia. The hospital then found that she didn’t have adequate health insurance and terminated treatment. According to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, Chloe should have been treated for the life-threatening condition, but a subsequent entry in her medical file suggested the eclampsia had been misdiagnosed and was in fact epilepsy. As the seizures had temporarily ceased, she was not deemed to be an emergency, and Chloe was transported to another hospital. She died en route, as did her unborn son. The hospital gave out a statement expressing sorrow for the tragic loss of life, but were adamant that they had acted with professionalism and compassion throughout.

The director at the time was Miriam Crane.

It fit with the new theory Jess had come up with. Corrina Stone had said there must be some kind of link between the victims or their families, but instead of looking for a way to connect them, Jess had sought what they had in common. Money was the first thing she thought of, but after discovering Swanson’s court case and Perry’s gentrification plans, she’d wondered if any of the other families had put profit before people. In Miriam Crane’s case, her hospital had refused to treat a pregnant woman who couldn’t afford her treatment. With Orville Lewis, it was his decision to close down a number of homeless shelters just before the coldest winter in California’s recent history. Nineteen people had died within two weeks, prompting him to make a U-turn and reopen them.

If Craig or Doreen Madden had a checkered past, it would confirm that she was on the right track.

Jess had asked Corrina to see what the FBI had on the Maddens, though she hadn’t told her what she was looking for. The last time she’d done that, Corrina had dismissed it. This time she wanted to confront her with irrefutable proof.

Jess had gone to the office on Wilshire for her daily thirty-minute briefing, but was disappointed. The Bureau’s data was next to useless. Financial records, work history, criminal records—or lack of—and social media profiles, none of which shed any light on their activities. The only thing that interested her was the work history. Craig Madden was CEO of FMT Group, a private equity firm.

Jess did a search for Craig Madden FMT Group and clicked the News options when the results appeared.

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