Due Justice

Chapter 28

Tampa, Florida

Sunday 7:20 a.m.

January 24, 1999

At this point, the possibilities seemed endless, even if I discounted all my personal acquaintances. I ran though the list.

Any lawyer involved in the breast implant litigation, on either side, would certainly have a motive to keep Morgan’s threatened great solution to the health issues from ever being published, if Carly’s theory of the litigation were true.

Ditto, the “victims,” manufacturers and the doctors making bundles on expert fees.

Somehow, though, I thought the murder a little too vicious, too devious for a purely professional motive. The killer took extraordinary steps to keep his work secret. Only luck and the low tide caused Morgan’s body to be discovered.

Morgan was reported missing. The police would eventually have inspected Morgan’s home and found the obvious evidence of murder, but with no physical body a charge and conviction was unlikely.

No, simply killing Morgan was not the goal.

The killer meant to make Morgan disappear. Forever.

Bad luck, not stupidity, had thwarted the killer’s achievement.

Not a detached professional motive, then, but a personal one.

Methodically, I considered each person I knew to have an axe to grind with Michael Morgan. I took out my yellow legal pad, filled now with notes, facts, thoughts on the case. I wrote down each of the possible suspects on two pages, leaving room for notes after each name.

Forced myself to consider each one in turn.

Eliminated Carly immediately.

Carly didn’t kill Morgan; I wouldn’t consider the possibility. She had no motive. If she’d discovered her company’s products were faulty, she could have resigned. She didn’t own MedPro, after all.

Nor did she have the capacity to kill.

Carly had always been difficult and often impossible, and I do subscribe to the nature theory of childhood development. Even so, I wouldn’t believe any of Kate’s children capable of murder. Never.

Which led me to consider MedPro’s two remaining founders:  Dr. Zimmer and Dr. Young.

Zimmer was least likely.  Too old and frail to kill Morgan in his home and spirit his body off to the gulf.

An accomplice?  Possible.

But Zimmer worried excessively about death by heart attack. He quit golf because he feared the stress might kill him. He wouldn’t risk the physical and emotional stress of murder on his weakened ticker. Certainly not simply to avoid potential financial ruin when he held only a partial interest in MedPro.

Sadly, no. Not Zimmer. I crossed him off my list.

The next name seemed to come alive on the page, tapping its feet, dashing to the finish line, shoving everyone aside, declaring itself the winner.

Carolyn Young.

Yes. Definitely a killer candidate.

By all accounts except hers, Morgan had used her. And discarded her like so many others. She admitted she never got over him. That sounded like a good motive for murder, but it wasn’t the only one she had.

 Carolyn Young was an owner of MedPro. Marilee Aymes claimed Carolyn was willing to commit theft to obtain that ownership. She also sought to protect her very lucrative explant scam and expert witness fees. The end of the litigation would make a sizeable dent in her earning power.  For Carolyn Young, killing Morgan would have been both personal and professional.