Rose Dhu: A Novel

Part I: The Disappearance

July 20

The Gold Surgery Team gathered in a tight knot in the Memorial Hospital surgical doctors’ lounge. Hyped up on caf- feine (coffee and energy drinks are plentiful in the OR), the interns and medical students had come in at 4:00 a.m. to pre- round, reviewing the labs and X-ray results on all twenty-eight patients on service so that they would be ready when their at- tending physician, Dr. Janie O’Connor, came in to run the list before the start of the day’s surgery schedule.

It was now 6:50 a.m., and Maddie Mandel, the chief surgical resident, had called Dr. O’Connor for the fourth time. “It went to voicemail again,” she said, staring at her iPhone in disbelief, as though the device were lying to her.

Maddie was an intense, no-nonsense “gunner,” a fierce patient advocate who would not accept anything less than 100 percent effort. Pegged as a potential chief resident from the very first week of her intern year, Dr. Mandel was an early O’Connor acolyte. Now, Maddie was Dr. O’Connor’s heir apparent and right hand. The Gold Team looked to her for guidance.

But today, she had none. The first case was scheduled for 7:00 a.m., and Janie O’Connor was nowhere to be found.

“We can’t take the first patient back until I talk to Dr. O’Connor,” Maddie said. “The attending has to be in-house.”

It was July, the first month of the academic year, and all the interns and medical students were skittish greenies, unused to their new roles. Things would be very different for all of them in eleven months. For now, the absence of their attending physician constituted even more of an intellectual decapitation than usual.

Dr. Mandel pointed to Bill Kelly, a pale, freckle-faced intern, and flicked her index finger toward the preop area. “Bill, go tell the first patient that there’s been a slight delay. And let the OR charge nurse know. I’ll try to locate Dr. O’Connor. Maybe she’s sick or had car trouble. Either way, we need to put a hold on things until I can track her down.”

Dr. Kelly, who was only twenty-six and looked even younger, nodded vigorously and sped off.

Maddie was certain that Janie O’Connor was not merely under the weather or having car trouble.

She would have called, she thought.

Maddie had to find a plan B.

Scrolling through her phone, she found the number for Dr. Malcolm King, a surgical attending who was not on ward duty this month.

He answered on the first ring.

“Dr. King? Maddie Mandel. I’m on Gold Team with Dr. O’Connor. We have a full surgical schedule today, and Dr. O’Connor has not shown up yet. I’ve been trying to get in touch with her, but I’ve gotten nothing back, and it’s been nearly an hour.”

Maddie and Dr. King spoke for a moment. Hanging up, she turned and faced the rest of the Gold Team. They were staring at her, wide-eyed and tight-lipped, as if they expected something cataclysmic to occur.

“Dr. King will be the attending physician for the service today. He’s on his way down. We’re going to run the list with him, and then we can start the surgeries,” she said.

The entire team seemed to exhale in unison before scurrying off to the computers to finish chart prep.

Dr. King had given Maddie Janie’s landline number, which she called at 7:00 a.m.

“Hello?” a sleep-caked voice answered.

Maddie felt a jolt of electricity course through her. “Dr. O’Connor?” she exclaimed.

“No, this is Diane, her sister. Who’s calling?”

“I’m sorry to bother you this early, ma’am. It’s Maddie Mandel, Dr. O’Connor’s chief resident. You sound just like your sister on the phone. Is Dr. O’Connor home?”

“Hold on. I’ll check.”

There was a momentary pause as Diane put down the phone. A crow, or maybe a raven, cawed boisterously in the background.

Diane picked up the phone once again. “Her car is gone,” the sister said. “She’s not at the hospital?”

“No, ma’am,” Maddie said. “We can’t find her. Will you please have her call me if she contacts you?”

“Of course,” Diane said. And then they hung up.

Maddie was worried. This unscheduled absence was very uncharacteristic behavior for her mentor and good friend.

Where are you, Janie? she thought.

2

They never found her.

On July 19, Janie O’Connor wrapped things up late at her office, then drove to her restored antebellum home at Rose Dhu, a riverside community on Savannah’s Southside, where she had lived for nearly a decade.

By the next morning, she was gone.

Janie’s bed was made. Her car was missing. There were no signs of foul play. Only after Janie failed to show up at the hospital did people realize something might be wrong.

Janie O’Connor was formally declared missing after twenty-four hours. By then, it was Saturday.

That weekend, the case made the local evening news. Dr. O’Connor was well known and well liked in Savannah. A former collegiate soccer player at the University of Georgia, Janie remained a competitive athlete at 36. Her long predawn runs were legendary, and a meticulous attention to detail and unwavering patient advocacy had made Dr. O’Connor a role model for nearly every surgical resident in Savannah. An articulate and passionate spokesperson for women’s health issues, she was a popular speaker at health forums in places like the Landings, the Ford Plantation, Palmetto Bluff, and other high-end retirement communities in the area. She was also a favorite interview source for Coastal Georgia television stations.

But what made Janie socially well known in Savannah was not her medical expertise. Instead, it was her boyfriend— or, perhaps, her former boyfriend, depending upon who one spoke to.

Janie O’Connor had been engaged to Phillip Carruthers for over a year. Widely considered Savannah’s most eligible bachelor, Phillip was a striking thirty-eight-year-old billionaire, the scion of Savannah’s wealthiest family. The Carruthers family’s presence in Savannah dated back to colonial times. They were a tight-knit bunch, very active philanthropically, and there were buildings, streets, and even a midtown park bearing the Carruthers name. Phillip had taken control of the sprawling Carruthers business empire following the untimely death of his father, Anderson Carruthers, in a hunting accident a decade before. Fiscally savvy and equipped with a Harvard MBA, Phillip had expanded the family’s pervasive influence dramatically over the years he had headed the Company, and the fam- ily now had twisted its tentacles into a vast array of imports and exports, warehouse construction, and real estate ventures throughout Coastal Georgia. The Carruthers family was even prominent in the metropolis of Atlanta, four hours north, where Phillip maintained close ties with the governor, with whom he frequently went hunting and fishing. Socially adept and charismatic, Phillip was well known as a ladies’ man, and his reputation as a dedicated bachelor was also well known. Seeing as Phillip showed up with a different woman on his arm at every social event, he was nicknamed Playboy Phil.

Janie’s relationship with Phillip Carruthers was unexpected; their engagement was an absolute shock. When Phillip announced his engagement to Savannah’s sweetheart, Janie O’Connor, it ignited a societal firestorm. Playboy Phil was formally off the market.

The wedding was scheduled at the imposing, white-spired Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in historic downtown Savannah. For months, social media hummed with rumors and innuendo about the details. A gargantuan wedding party pavilion, designed by New York architect Archibald Hadid, was under construction on the Carruthers estate on Wilmington Island. Movie stars, a cadre of Atlanta-based entertainers and athletes, and a certain Tony Award–winning producer were all rumored to be attending.

But then, with plans well underway, everything fell apart.

Chatter about premarital discord began when construction of the wedding party pavilion abruptly halted. Shortly thereafter, the small army of florists, bakers, and musicians hired for the event was told to stand down.

The Savannah gossip mill raged, its rumors ranging from the merely scandalous (“Playboy Phil cheated on Dr. O’Connor with the wedding planner!”) to the ridiculous (“I heard he was planning to force her to stay at home and just make babies for him!”). The scandal-savvy hive of Coastal Georgia society had never been more abuzz.

Right smack in the middle of this swirling maelstrom of innuendo, Janie O’Connor up and vanished.

Two days after Janie’s disappearance, Janie’s sister, Diane, was interviewed by Tina Baker, the charismatic anchor at Savannah’s WKKR television station. By that point, the national news media had started to report on Janie’s disappearance. Tina’s interview with Diane was picked up by CBS, the parent network of WKKR, for a national prime-time broadcast.

Detective Frank Winger and his partner, Pepper Stephens, were the lead investigators on the O’Connor case. Savannah Police Chief Clarence “Gatehouse” Brown had said he needed his “best team” at work on the high-profile disappearance. Frank and Pepper had worked together for over a decade and had cracked many a high-profile whodunit.

But Frank had never seen a case quite like this one.

The night the Tina Baker interview aired, Frank picked up some takeout sushi at Hirano’s. Dressed in battered blue jeans, a vintage Eagles T-shirt from the original Hotel California tour, and battered Tecovas cowboy boots, Frank did not look much like a detective. Most people thought he was a day laborer—if they even saw him at all.

“The usual, Frank?” said Keiko, the perky cashier at Hirano’s.

“Of course,” he said, grinning.

She dropped four containers of shrimp sauce and a pair of chopsticks into the bag.

When he arrived at the apartment, Frank took off his reflective aviator sunglasses and dropped them on the table next to the front door, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror in the process.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

He was always surprised at his appearance these days. At forty-six, he saw that his once-black hair was now grizzled and streaked with gray, and his face was as creased as an old saddle. He’d grown the beard a few years back to try to look more distinguished. That had been Paulina’s idea, of course, and he had not shaved it since she died, out of some vague respect for her memory. But the beard was flecked with gray, too, and Frank realized now that it just made him look even older, like one of the aging knights from some medieval drama on HBO.

Sushi had been one of Paulina’s suggestions, as well. “You can’t just eat pizza and hamburgers every day,” she’d said.

“Sure I can,” Frank had replied.

Paulina had convinced him to eat sushi, though. And he loved it now.

Frank didn’t usually watch much TV, mainly local news and Ravens and Orioles games (you can take the boy out of Baltimore . . .). Still, it was readily apparent, even to him, that Tina Baker was too talented for the relatively small Savannah market. Poised and professional, Tina’s questions to Janie’s sis- ter, Diane, reflected both her compassion and her razor-sharp intellect.

This story might be Tina’s ticket to the big time, Frank thought.

“I understand you were living with your sister at the time of her disappearance?” Tina asked.

Diane nodded.

“And you actually saw her on July 19, the night she disappeared?”

“I did.”

“What time was that?”

“She got home about 7:45 p.m., or maybe a little after that. It wasn’t dark yet.”

“How did she seem?”

“Perfectly normal. She made herself a turkey sandwich. I’d already eaten, since she’d gotten home late. We talked a bit. I wasn’t feeling well, so I took a sleeping pill and went to bed early. She said she was going to read some and turn in early herself. She had a big surgery schedule the next day.”

“And you never saw her again?”

Diane shook her head. Tears filled her eyes. “By morning, she was gone—although I didn’t realize it until a few hours had gone by.”

Tina leaned forward, a concerned look on her face. “What do you mean?”

“I was still asleep when the chief resident called the land- line around 7:00 a.m. It startled me—the landline doesn’t ring much these days—and I was a little groggy when we spoke. Janie’s bed was made, the alarm was off, and her car was gone, but that was normal. She gets up at 4:00 a.m. even when she’s off and usually leaves before dawn every day. After I hung up with the chief resident, I fed Janie’s dog, Boodles, took him outside, and made myself some breakfast.”

“Why did the chief resident call the landline?”

“I guess they had not been able to reach Janie on her cell. Janie insists on keeping a landline so she can be reached if cell service goes down. That’s the way she is. She always has a backup plan.”

“And what did the chief resident ask you?”

“She asked if Janie was home and if I had seen her.” “What did you tell her?”

“The exact same thing I’m telling you. I tried calling Janie’s cell and got no answer. I called our parents, but they hadn’t heard from her, either. I walked all over the property here at Rose Dhu, thinking she might have been injured somewhere— Janie has about five acres, and we see water moccasins and copperheads sometimes—but she was nowhere to be found. I even went out on the dock and checked the kayaks, but they were all stowed. I then drove along her usual running route, thinking something might have happened to her while she was exercising. We sometimes see stray dogs roaming around the neighborhood, or even a few stray people, but there was no sign of her anywhere. Around lunchtime, I called the chief resident back, but she still had heard nothing. That was when I really started getting worried.”

Diane brushed a few tears away, gently shaking her head.

“Do you think your sister would leave town without any sort of explanation?”

Diane shook her head vigorously. “Janie would never do anything like that. It’s so unlike her. She’s the most responsible person I know.”

“What do you think happened to your sister, Diane?” Tina said.

Diane looked up, her electric-blue eyes red-rimmed and swollen. “Something terrible, Tina. She’s been kidnapped or . . . or . . .”

Diane never finished the sentence, but her crumpled face said everything anyone needed.

Frank froze the streaming image and gazed at Diane’s tear- stained face for a moment. She was wearing a fair amount of makeup, but there was a faint bruise on her neck and another at the angle of her jaw, below her left ear.

It may be nothing, Frank thought. But maybe not.

Frank unfroze the image, and the interview went to a commercial.

He picked up a legal pad from his desk and jotted down a few notes:

Diane saw Janie the night before at 7:45 PM

Gone by 7 AM Friday

Car gone/alarm not on (was it ever activated?)

Has dog

Cameras?

Relationship between Janie and Diane

Bruises on Diane’s face and neck

When they met, which would be soon, Frank would have some very specific questions for Janie’s little sister.