Do No Harm

Chapter 62

Dash pulled off his sweatshirt and draped it over David's couch, where it sprawled like a gray blanket. He put his feet up on the table, and David worried momentarily it would give under the weight of his legs. Dash flipped through the bad photocopy of Connolly's abstract-Yale had taken the original-and let a grumble escape his chest.

Someone had leaked the story of the torture-tape call, causing a fresh influx of reporters to sweep through the Med Center grounds. David had all but waded through reporters on his way to his car after work. News of David and Don's dispute in the ER had not helped to abate the media frenzy. David had returned home to find a photographer camped out across the street and six messages on his answering machine from trashy TV "news" producers and more legitimate reporters. David's problem-resolution instincts had been firing inside him, phantom synapses-to call Sandy, to protect the hospital, to spin control. When he'd closed and bolted his front door, an intense burst of stress-lined relief had hit him; at least for the duration of his time off, he was no longer a part of the medical establishment. For the first time in his life.

Dash set down the abstract on top of the stack of other materials he and David had spent the late afternoon reviewing, and gripped his shoulder, working it with a thumb-an athlete's habit. "Have the detectives finished running down the other subjects?"

"Most of them. Three suicides, five are in prison, and three have been completely lost track of. Probably homeless. Or dead."

"Connolly certainly raised the bar on sadistic separation studies." Dash leaned back and laced his hands behind his head. "Those kids were never given a fair chance. Love, respect, care-these are not negotiable luxuries for children. They're fundamental needs."

"I know, but how can we use all this? To get to Clyde."

"I think you have several pieces of the puzzle," Dash said. "One: He wants revenge for this study. Two: He's learned that to inflict fear is to hold power." He let out a ticking exhale. "You see the problem."

"No."

"Well, the people directly responsible for the study are dead. He's probably not a sufficiently abstract thinker to go after grant committee members and the bureaucrats who enabled the study. So what does that leave him?"

"The hospital."

"Precisely. But how can you elicit fear from an institution? You can't. So he attacks some nurses and doctors, tries to run a current of fear through the hospital, but that's not personal or sufficiently satisfying. That's why he's evolving. He wants to exact more. But he doesn't know how."

And evolved he had. He'd varied his attacks, and switched their location. From a cowardly, unseen hurler of alkali to a rapist attempting to dominate a woman directly.

David recalled Sandy's words in the elevator that had struck something in him: As a physician-and particularly as a chief-you are a representative of this hospital everywhere you go. "Me," David said. "He can frighten me." He stood. "Of course-I'd been mostly viewing his obsession with me and his attacks on Diane as warnings. As his attempts to get me to back off, since I've been pursuing him. But that's entirely wrong. He's only switched his focus."

"What do you mean?"

"If he's interested in revenge on the hospital, I'm the perfect object of his vengeance. I'm the highest-level employee of the hospital he's had contact with. My last name is all over the Med Center. And he perceives me as threatening him in my attempts to locate him-something that surely must recall the persecution he felt as a child in Connolly's study. Why else would he call me in the middle of the night and play a recording of a woman being tortured? Why else would he attack Diane? To scare me. But he doesn't want me to back off. He wants to involve me more. He wants me to be diminished."

"I suppose it makes sense. A movement from the general to the specific." Dash crossed his legs, letting a size-seventeen foot dangle over his knee. "What are the ways to instill fear in you? To threaten or injure you directly, or to threaten those you love."

"I'll have to call Yale and see if we can get some protection on people close to me."

"Okay. Who?"

"Diane… Sandy… " David was embarrassed that he couldn't think of anyone else.

"I assume there's already protection on Connolly's wife."

"I believe so, but I'll double-check."

"How about men?"

"No way. He doesn't have the balls."

"He attacked you."

"On his turf. In his comfort zone. He had to lure me near that house. Plus, I walked into that attack-he didn't plan it."

"He attacked the security guard who was with Diane."

"Yale said the kid looked barely older than an adolescent." David shook his head. "I have to say, despite Clyde's emergence from timidity, I still doubt he's acquired the courage to attack a full-grown man." David rubbed his temples, straining to think of other names. "The only other person I'm close to who he knows about is you." David looked at Dash's barrel chest, the ridges of muscle capping his shoulders. "And he'd be an idiot to try that."

"Let's keep in mind that you and those around you are not necessarily his only targets. While you're certainly appealing to him, there's nothing to say he's not still planning other attacks on nurses and docs."

David moistened his lips, which had grown dry. "If there was some way to provide an opportunity for him to inflict fear, maybe we could lure him."

"Well, what are the ways you could draw someone like Clyde? The appearance of vulnerability. Who appears vulnerable? Old ladies. Kids. Women."

"We wouldn't risk anyone in those categories, except female cops, maybe. Besides, how do you make someone look susceptible to being scared?" David shook his head dismissively. "Maybe there's a play to be made at locations that are meaningful to him. He's been driven off his own turf. The only other area we know is of interest to him is the hospital. Maybe we could tempt him there."

"If you think he's that stupid. Security's been cranked up another notch after his attack on Diane. He's got to know he's playing increasingly bad odds there."

They sat quietly for a few moments, digesting their respective thoughts. The phone rang, and David heard the machine pick up in the bedroom. "Hi, Tom McNeil from the LA Weekly. I've received word that you're actually in contact with the Westwood… "

"I could try to manipulate him if he calls back," David said. "Actively draw his interest. If he threatens me, how can I respond to make him more likely to contact me again? If I can agitate him, maybe he'll give up more information. Should I act really scared or not scared at all?"

"I'd imagine your being immune to his attempts to scare you would be more galling. If you taunted him, even, that might draw him in. But don't overdo it. He's not beyond being scared off himself." Dash paused. "There are risks."

"Aside from the obvious?"

"Yes. Every intervention so far has driven him to a higher level of violence. When he's foiled, he comes back with something more bold. The more bold he gets, the more fear he's able to generate. Think of it as an intensifying addiction."

"What can I do about that?"

Dash shrugged, a massive, shifting movement. "Probably nothing. I'm just making something clear. You're the one who's been raising the stakes."