Harvest

CHAPTER TWENTY

For Abby, mornings were the worst. She would awaken feeling that first sleepy flush of anticipation for the day ahead. Then suddenly she'd remember: I have nowhere to go. That realization would strike as cruelly as any physical blow. She would lie in bed, listening to Mark getting dressed. She'd hear him moving around in the still-dark bedroom, and she would feel so engulfed by depression she could not say a word to him. They shared a house and a bed, yet they'd scarcely spoken to each other in days. This is how love dies, thought Abby, hearing him walk out the front door. Not with angry words, but with silence.

WhenAbby was twelve years old, her father was laid off from his job at the tannery. For weeks afterwards, he'd drive away each morning, as though heading for work as usual. Abby never found out where he went, or what he did. Till the day he died, he never told her. All Abby knew was that her father was terrified of staying home and confronting his own failure. So he'd continued the charade, fleeing the house every morning.

Just as Abby was doing today.

She left the car at home and walked instead, blocks and blocks, not really caring where she went. Last night the weather had turned cold, and by the time she finally stopped in at a bagel shop, her face was numb. She bought coffee and a sesame seed bagel and slid into one of the booths. She'd taken only two bites when she happened to glance at the man at the next table. He was reading a Boston Herald.

Abby's photo was on the front page.

She felt like crawling out the door. Furtively she glanced around the care, half expecting everyone to be looking at her, but no one was.

She bolted out of the booth, tossed her bagel in the trash, and walked out. Her appetite was gone. At a newsstand a block away, she purchased a copy of the Herald and huddled, shivering in a doorway while she scanned the article.

RIGORS OF SURGICAL TRAINING MAY HAVE LED

TO TRAGEDY

By all accounts, Dr. Abigail DiMatteo was an outstanding resident — one of the best at Bayside Medical Centre, according to Department Chairman Dr. Colin Wettig. But sometime in the last few months, soon after Dr. DiMatteo entered her second year in the programme, things began to go terribly wrong…

Abby had to stop reading; her breaths were coming too hard and fast. It took her a few moments to calm down enough to finish the article. When she finally did, she felt truly sick.

The reporter had included everything. The lawsuits. Mary Allen's death. The shouting match with Brenda. None of it was deniable. All the elements, taken together, painted the picture of an unstable, even dangerous personality. It fed right into the public's secret horror of being at the mercy of a deranged physician.

I can't believe it's me they're writing about.

Even if she managed to retain her medical licence, even if she finished a residency, an article like this would follow her forever. So would the doubts. No patient in his right mind would go under the knife of a psychopath.

She didn't know how long she walked around with that newspaper clutched in her hand. When she finally came to a halt, she was standing on the Harvard University Common, and her ears were aching from the cold. She realized it was already well past lunchtime. She'd been walking around all morning, and now half the day was gone. She didn't know where to go next. Everyone else on the Common — students in backpacks, shaggy professors in tweeds — seemed to have a destination. But not her.

She looked down again, at the newspaper. The photograph they'd used of her was from the residency directory, a shot taken when she was an intern. She'd smiled straight at the camera, her face fresh and eager, the look of a young woman ready and willing to work for her dream.

She threw the newspaper into the nearest trash receptacle and walked home, thinking: Fight back. I have to fight back.

But she and Vivian had run out of leads. Yesterday, Vivian had flown to Burlington. When she'd called Abby last night, it had been with bad news: Tim Nicholls's practice had closed down, and no one knew where he was. Dead end. Also, Wilcox Memorial had no records of any harvests on those four dates. Another dead end. Finally, Vivian had checked with the local police and had found no records of missing persons or unidentified bodies with their hearts cut out. Final dead end.

They've covered their tracks. [Ve'll never beat them.

As soon as she stepped in the front door, she saw the answering machine was blinking. It was a message from Vivian to call back. She'd left a Burlington number. Abby dialled the number, but got no answer, so she hung up.

Next she called NEOB, but as usual, they wouldn't put her through to Helen Lewis. No one, it seemed, wanted to hear the latest theories of the psychopathic Dr. DiMatteo. She didn't know who else to call. She ran through the list of all the people she knew at Bayside. Dr. Wettig. Mark. Mohandas and Zwick. Susan Casado. Jeremiah Parr. She didn't trust any of them. Any of them.

She'd just picked up the phone to try calling Vivian again when she happened to glance out of the window. Parked at the far end of the street was a maroon van.

You bastard. This time you're mind She ran to the hall closet and pulled out the binoculars. Focusing from the window, she could just make out the licence plate.

I got you, she thought in triumph. I got you.

She grabbed the phone and dialled Katzka. It struck her then, as she was waiting for him to come on the line, how strange it was that he should be the one she'd call. Maybe it was an automatic response. You need help, you call a cop. And he was the only cop she knew.

"Detective Katzka," he said in his usual flat and businesslike voice. "The van is back!" she blurted. "Excuse me?"

"This is Abby DiMatteo. The van that was following me — it's parked right outside my house. The licence number's 539TDV. Massachusetts plate."

There was a pause as he wrote it down. "You live on Brewster Street, right?"

"Yes. Please send someone right away. I don't know what he's going to do."

"Just sit tight and keep the doors locked. Got that?"

"OK." She let out a nervous breath. "OK."

She knew the doors were already locked, but she re-checked them anyway. Everything was secure. She returned to the living room and sat near the curtain, every so often glancing outside to make sure the van was still there. She wanted it to stay right where it was. She wanted to see the driver's reaction when the cops arrived.

HARVEST

Fifteen minutes later, a familiar greenVolvo drove by and pulled over at the kerb, right across the street from the van. She hadn't expected Katzka himself to show up, but there he was, stepping out of his car. At her first glimpse of him, she felt an overwhelming sense of relief. He'll know what to do, she thought. Katzka was clever enough to deal with anything.

He crossed the street and slowly approached the van.

Abby pressed closer to the window, her heart suddenly pounding. She wondered if Katzka's pulse was racing as fast as hers was. He moved with almost casual grace towards the driver's door. Only as he shifted, turning slightly towards Abby, did she notice that he'd drawn his gun. She hadn't even seen him reach for it.

She was almost afraid to watch now. Afraid for him.

He edged forward and glanced in the window. Apparently he saw nothing suspicious. He circled around to the rear of the van and peered through the back window. Then he re-holstered his gun and looked up and down the street.

At a nearby house, the front door suddenly swung open and a man in grey overalls stormed down the porch steps, yelling and waving. Katzka responded with his trademark unflappability and produced his badge. The other man took a look at it and handed it back. Then he took out his wallet and showed hid/s ID.

For a while the two men stood talking, gesturing every so often towards the van and the house. At last the man in the overalls went back inside.

Katzka walked towards Abby's.

She let him in the front door. "What happened?"

"Nothing."

"Who's the driver? Why's he been following me?"

"He says he has no idea what you're talking about."

She followed him into the living room. "I'm not blind! I've seen that van here before. On this street."

"The driver says he's never been here before."

"Who/s the driver, anyway?"

Katzka pulled out his notebook. "John Doherty, age thirty-six, Massachusetts resident. Licensed plumber. He says this is the first call he's ever made to Brewster Street. The van is registered to Back Bay Plumbing. And it's full of tools." He closed his notebook and slid it into his coat pocket. Then he regarded her with his usual detachment.

"I was so sure," she murmured. "I was so sure it was the same one."

"You still insist there was a van?"

"Yes, godammit!" she snapped. "There was a van!"

He reacted to her outburst with a slightly raised eyebrow. She forced herself to take a deep breath. A burst of temper was the last thing this man would respond to. He was all logic, all reason. Mr Spock with a badge.

She said, more calmly now, "I am not imagining things. And I'm not making them up."

"If you think you see the van again, get the licence number."

"If I think I see it?"

"I'll call Back Bay Plumbing, to confirm Doherty's information. But I really do believe he's just a plumber." Katzka glanced towards her living room. The phone was ringing. "Aren't you going to answer it?"

"Please don't leave. Not yet. I have a few things to tell you."

He had already reached for the doorknob. Now he paused, watching as she picked up the phone.

"Hello?" she said.

A woman's voice responded softly, "Dr. DiMatteo?" InstantlyAbby's gaze shot to Katzka's. He seemed to understand, just from her glance, that this call was important. "Mrs Voss?" said Abby.

"I've learned something," said Nina. "I don't know what it means. If it means anything at all."

Katzka moved to Abby's side. He had done it so quickly, so quietly, she'd barely registered his approach. He bent his head towards the receiver to listen in.

"What did you find out?" said Abby.

"I made some calls. To the bank, and to our accountant. On September 23rd, Victor transferred funds to a company called the Amity Corporation. In Boston."

"You're sure about that date?"

"Yes."

September 23rd, thought Abby. One day before Nina Voss's transplant.

"What do you know about Amity?" asked Abby.

"Nothing. Victor's never mentioned the name. With a transaction this large, he'd normally discuss it…" There was a silence. Abby heard voices in the background, then the sounds of frantic shuffling. Nina's voice came back on. Tenser. Softer. "I have to get off the phone."

"You said it was a large transaction. How large?"

For a moment there was no reply. Abby thought perhaps Nina had already hung up. Then she heard the whispered answer.

"Five million," said Nina. "He transferred five million dollars."

Nina hung up the telephone. She heard Victor's footsteps, but she did not look up as he came into the bedroom. "Who were you talking to?" he asked. "Cynthia. I called to thank her for the flowers."

"Which flowers were those again?"

"The orchids."

He glanced at the vase on the dresser. "Oh, yes. Very nice."

"Cynthia says they're going to Greece next spring. I guess they're tired of the Caribbean." How easily she lied to him. When had it started? When had they stopped speaking the truth to each other?

He sat down beside her on the bed. She felt him studying her. "When you're all better," he said, "Maybe we'll go back to Greece. Maybe we'll even go with Cynthia and Robert. Wouldn't you like that?"

She nodded and looked down at the bedspread. At her hands, the fingers bony and wasting away. But I am never getting better. We both know that.

She slid her legs out from under the covers. "I have to use the bathroom," she said.

"Shall I help you?"

"No. I'm fine." Rising to her feet, she felt a brief spell of lightheadedness. Lately she'd been having the spells often, whenever she stood up or exerted herself in even the slightest way. She said nothing about it to Victor, but just waited for the feeling to pass.

Then she continued slowly into the bathroom.

She heard him pick up the telephone.

Only when she'd shut the bathroom door did she suddenly realize her mistake. The last number she'd called was still in the phone's memory system. All Victor had to do was press Redial, and he would know she'd lied to him. It was just the sort of thing Victor would do. He'd learn she hadn't called Cynthia. He'd find out, somehow he'd find out, that it was Abby DiMatteo she'd called.

Nina stood with her back pressed to the bathroom door, listening. She heard him hang up the phone again. Heard him say, "Nina?"

Another wave of lightheadedness hit her. She dropped her head, fighting the darkness that was beginning to cloud her vision. Her legs seemed to melt away beneath her. She felt herself sliding downwards.

He rattled the door. "Nina, I need to speak to you."

"Victor," she whispered, but knew he couldn't hear her. No one could hear her.

She lay on the bathroom floor, too weak to move, too weak to call out to him.

She felt her heart flutter like a butterfly's wings in her chest.

"This has to be the wrong place," said Abby.

She and Katzka were parked on a rundown street in Roxbury. It was a neighbourhood of barred storefronts and businesses on the verge of collapse. The only apparently thriving enterprise was a body building gym a few doors down. Through the gym's open windows, they could hear the clank of weights and occasional masculine laughter. Adjacent to the gym was an unoccupied building with a For Lease sign. And next to that was the Amity building, a four-storey brownstone. Over the entrance hung the sign:

Amity Medical Supplies Sales and Service Behind the barred front windows was a tired-looking display of company products: Crutches and canes. Oxygen tanks. Foam mattress pads to prevent bedsores. Bedside commodes. A mannequin wearing a nurse's uniform and cap straight out of the sixties.

Abby gazed across the street at the shabby display window and she said, "This can't be the right Amity."

"It's the only listing in the phone book," said Katzka.

"Why would he transfer five million dollars to this business?"

"It could be just one branch of a larger corporation. Maybe he saw an investment opportunity."

She shook her head. "The timing's all wrong. Put yourself in VictorVoss's place. His wife is dying. He's desperate to get her the operation she needs. He's not going to be thinking about his investments."

"It depends how much he cares about his wife."

"He cares a lot."

"How do you know?"

She looked at him. "I know."

He regarded her in that quiet way of his. How strange, she thought, that his gaze no longer made her feel uncomfortable.

HARVEST

He opened his door. "I'll see what I can find out."

"What are you going to do?"

"Look around. Ask a few questions."

"I'll go in with you."

"No, you stay in the car." He started to step out, but she pulled him back.

"Look," she said. "I'm the one with everything to lose. I've already lost my job. I'm losing my licence. And now people are calling me a murderer or a psychotic or both. It's my life they've fucked up. This could be my one chance to fight back."

"Then let's not screw it up, OK? Someone in there could recognize you. That would certainly tip them off. Do you want to risk that?"

She sank back. Katzka was right. Goddamn it, he was right. He hadn't wanted her to come along on this ride in the first place, but she'd insisted. She'd told him she could drive here on her own, with or without him. So here she was, and she couldn't even walk in the building. She couldn't even fight her own battles any more. They'd taken that away from her, too. She sat shaking her head, angry about her own impotence. Angry at Katzka for having pointed it out.

He said, "Lock the doors." And he stepped out of the car.

She watched him cross the street, watched him walk into the shabby entrance. She could picture what he'd find inside. Depressing displays of wheelchairs and emesis basins. Racks of nurses' uniforms under dustcovers of yellowing plastic. Boxes of orthopaedic shoes. She could imagine every detail because she had been in shops just like it when she'd purchased her first set of uniforms.

Five minutes passed. Then ten.

Katzka, Katzka. What are you doing in there?

He'd said he was going to ask questions, that he would try not to tip them off. She trusted his judgment. The average homicide cop, she decided, was probably smarter than the average surgeon. But maybe not smarter than the average internist. That was the running joke among hospital house staff: the stupidity of surgeons. Internists relied on their brains, surgeons on their precious hands. If an internist is in an elevator and the door starts to shut prematurely, he'll stick in his hand to stop it. A surgeon will stick in his head. Ha, ha.

Twenty minutes had gone by. It was after five now, and the anaemic sunshine had already faded to a gloomy dusk. Through the window crack, she could hear the continual whoosh of cars on the Martin Luther King Boulevard. Rush hour. Up the street, two men with biceps of heroic proportions came out of the gym and lumbered to their cars.

She kept watching the entrance, waiting for Katzka to emerge. It was five-twenty.

The traffic was beginning to thicken even on this street. Through the flow of cars, she caught only intermittent glimpses of the front entrance. Then, suddenly, there was a gap in the traffic and she was looking straight across the street as a man emerged from the side door of the Amity building. He paused on the sidewalk and glanced at his watch. When he looked up again, Abby felt her heart kick into a gallop. She recognized that face. The grotesquely heavy brow. The hawklike nose.

It was Dr. Mapes. The courier who'd delivered NinaVoss's donor heart to the operating room.

Mapes began walking. Halfway up the street, he stopped at a blue Trans-Am parked at the kerb. He took out a set of car keys.

Abby looked back at the Amity building, hoping, praying for Katzka to appear. Come on, come on. I'm going to lose Mapes.t She looked back at the Trans-Am. Mapes had climbed inside now, and was fastening his seat belt. He started the engine. Easing slightly away from the kerb, he waited for a break in the traffic.

Abby cast a frantic glance down at the ignition and saw that Katzka had left his keys dangling there.

This could be her one chance. Her only chance. The blue Trans-Am pulled into the street. There was no time left to think it over.

Abby scrambled into the driver's seat and started Katzka's car. She lurched into traffic, eliciting a screech of tyres and an angry honk from another car behind her.

A block ahead, Mapes glided through the intersection just as the light turned red.

Abby squealed to a stop. There were four cars between her and the intersection and no way to get around them. By the time the light turned green again, Mapes could be blocks away. She sat counting the seconds, cursing Boston traffic lights and Boston drivers and her own indecision. If only she'd pulled away from the kerb earlier! The Trans-Am was barely in view now, just a glint of blue in a river of cars. What the hell was wrong with this light?

At last it turned green, but still no one was moving. The driver in front must be asleep at the wheel. Abby leaned on her horn, releasing a deafening blast. The cars ahead of her finally began to move. She stepped on the accelerator, then let up on it. Someone was pounding at the side of her car.

Glancing right, she saw Katzka running alongside the passenger door. She braked and hit the lock-release button.

He yanked open the door. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Get in."

"No, first you pull over-'

"Get the fuck in.t'

He blinked in surprise. And got in.

At once she goosed the accelerator, and they shot through the intersection. Two blocks ahead, a flash of blue streaked rightward. The Trans-Am was turning onto Cottage Street. If she didn't stay right on his tail, she could lose him in the traffic coming up. She swerved left across a double line, raced past three cars in a row, and screeched back into her lane just in time. She heard Katzka snap on his seatbelt. Good. Because this could be one hell of a wild ride. They turned onto Cottage.

"Are you going to tell me?" he said.

"He came out the side door of the Amity building. The guy in the blue car."

"Who is he?"

"The organ courier. He said his name was Mapes." She spotted another break in traffic, made another passing swoop into the left lane, then back again.

Katzka said, "I think I should drive."

"He's heading into the traffic circle. Now which way?Which way's he going…"

The Trans-Am looped around the circle, then cut away east. "He's heading for the expressway," said Katzka.

"Then so are we." Abby entered the traffic circle and peeled off after the Trans-Am.

Katzka had guessed correctly. Mapes was heading onto the expressway ramp. She followed him, her heart ramming her chest, her hands slick on the steering wheel. Here's where she could lose him. The expressway at five-thirty was like a bumper car ride at sixty miles an hour, every driver a maniac intent on getting home. She merged into traffic and spotted Mapes way ahead, switching to the left lane.

She tried to make the same lane change, only to find a truck muscling in, refusing to yield. Abby signalled, nudged closer to his lane. The truck only tightened the gap. This had turned into a dangerous game of chicken now, Abby veering towards the truck, the truck holding fast. She was too pumped up on adrenalin to be afraid, too intent on keeping up with Mapes. Behind the wheel, she had transformed into some other woman, a desperate, foul-mouthed stranger she scarcely recognized. She was fighting back at them, and it felt good. It felt powerful. Abby DiMatteo on fucking testosterone.

She floored the accelerator and shot left, right in front of the truck.

"Jesus Christ!" yelled Katzka. "Are you trying to get us killed?" '! don't give a shit. I want this guy."

"Are you like this in the OR?"

"Oh, yeah. I'm a real fucking terror. Haven't you heard?"

"Remind me not to get sick."

"Now what's he doing?"

Up ahead the Trans-Am had switched lanes again. It peeled to the right, onto the turnoff for the Callahan Tunnel.

"Shit," said Abby, cutting right as well. She shot across two lanes and they entered the cavelike gloom of the tunnel. Graffiti whipped past. Concrete walls echoed back the grinding of tyres over tarmac, the whoosh-whoosh of cars slicing the air. Their re-emergence into the grey light of dusk was a shock to their eyes.

The Trans-Am left the expressway. Abby followed.

They were in East Boston now, the gateway to Logan International Airport. That must be where Mapes was headed, she thought. The airport.

She was surprised when, instead, he rattled across a railroad track and worked his way west, away from the airport. He headed into a maze of streets.

Abby slowed down, gave him some space. That surge of adrenalin she'd felt during the frantic chase on the expressway was fading. The Trans-Am wasn't going to get away from her in this neighbourhood. Now her challenge was to avoid being noticed.

They were heading along the wharves of Boston's inner harbour. Behind a chain-link fence, rows and rows of unused ship's containers were stacked three-deep like giant Legos. And beyond the container yard was the industrial waterfront. Against the setting sun loomed the silhouettes of loading cranes and ships in port. The Trans-Am turned left, drove through an open gate and into the container yard.

Abby pulled up beside the fence and parked. Peering through a gap between a forklift and a container, she saw the Trans-Am drive to the foot of the pier and stop. Mapes got out of his car. He strode onto the dock, where a ship was moored. It looked like a small freighter — a two-hundred footer, she estimated.

Mapes gave a shout. After a moment, a man appeared on deck and waved him aboard. Mapes climbed the gangplank and disappeared into the vessel.

"Why did he come here?" she said. "Why a boat?"

"Are you sure it's the same man?"

"If it isn't, then Mapes has a double working at Amity." She paused, suddenly remembering where Katzka had just spent the last half-hour. "What did you pounds d out about the place, anyway?"

"You mean before I noticed someone stealing my car?" He shrugged. "It looked like what it's supposed to be. A medical supply business. I told them I needed a hospital bed for my wife, and they demonstrated some of the latest models."

"How many people in the building?"

"I saw three. One guy in the showroom. Two on the second floor handling phone orders. None of them looked very happy to be working there."

"What about the upper two floors?"

"Warehouse space, I assume. There's really nothing about that building worth pursuing."

She looked past the fence, at the blue Pontiac. "You could subpoena their financial records. Find out where Voss's five million dollars went to."

"We have no basis on which to subpoena any records."

"How much evidence do you need? I know that was the courier! I know what these people are doing."

"Your testimony isn't going to sway any judge. Certainly not under the circumstances." His answer was honest — brutally so. "I'm sorry, Abby. But you know as well as I do that you have a whopping credibility problem."

She felt herself closing off against him, withdrawing in anger. "You're absolutely right," she shot back. "Who'd believe me? It's just the psychotic Dr. DiMatteo, babbling nonsense again."

He didn't respond to that self-pitying statement. In the silence that followed, she regretted having said it. The sound of her own voice, wounded and sarcastic, seemed to hang between them.

They said nothing for a while. Overhead a jet screamed, the shadow of its wings swooping past like a raptor's. It climbed, glittering in the last light of the setting sun. Only as the jet's roar faded away did Katzka speak again.

"It's not that I don't believe you," he said.

She looked at him. "No one else does. Why would you?"

"Because of Dr. Levi. And the way he died." He gazed straight ahead at the darkening road. "It wasn't the way people usually kill themselves. In a room where no one will find you for days. We don't like to think of our bodies decomposing. We want to be found before the maggots get to us. Before we're black and bloated. While we can still be recognized as human. Then there were all the plans he'd made. The trip to the Caribbean. Thanksgiving with his son. He was looking ahead, expecting a future." Katzka glanced sideways, at a streetlamp that had just flickered on in the gathering dusk. "Finally there's his wife, Elaine. I often have to talk to surviving spouses. Some of them are shocked, some of them grieving. Some of them are just plain relieved. I'm a widower myself. I remember, after my wife died, that it was all I could manage just to crawl out of bed every morning. But what does Elaine Levi do? She calls a moving company, packs up her furniture, and leaves town. It's not the act of a grieving spouse. It's what someone does when they're guilty. Or they're scared."

Abby nodded. It's what she'd thought as well. That Elaine was afraid.

"Then you told me about Kunstler and Hennessy," he said. "And suddenly I'm not looking at a single death. I'm dealing with a series of them. And Aaron Levi's is beginning to look less and less like a suicide."

Another jet took off, the scream of its engines making conversation impossible. It banked left, skimming the evening mist now gathering over the harbour. Even after the jet had vanished into the western sky, Abby could still hear the roar in her ears. "Dr. Levi didn't hang himself," said Katzka.

Abby frowned at him. "I thought the autopsy was confirmatory."

"We found something on toxicology. We got the results back just last week from the crime lab."

"Something turned up?"

"In his muscle tissue. They found traces of succinylcholine." She stared at him. Succinylcholine. It was used every day by anaesthesiologists to induce muscle relaxation during surgery. In the OR, it was a vitally useful drug. Outside the OR, its administration would cause the most horrible of deaths. Complete paralysis in a fully conscious subject. Though awake and aware, one would be unable to move or breathe. Like drowning in a sea of air.

She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. "It wasn't a suicide."

"No."

She took a breath and slowly let it out. For a moment she was too horrified to speak. She didn't dare even consider what Aaron's death must have been like. She looked through the fence, towards the pier. Evening fog was forming over the harbour and starting to drift in wispy fingers across the waterfront. Mapes had not reappeared. The freighter loomed, black and silent in the fading light.

"I want to know what's on that boat," she said. "I want to know why he's gone there." She reached for the door. He stopped her. "Not yet."

"When?"

"Let's drive up a block and pull over. We can wait there." He glanced at the sky, then at the fog thickening over the water. "It'll be dark soon."