Mortal Remains

Chapter 14

Thursday, November 22,

11:45 A.M.

Hampton Junction

Mark stood on the back porch, sipping a cup of coffee that had come from the bottom of the pot. Along the horizon, a gray, humpbacked line of clouds strained toward the east, dragging their shaggy tendrils over the hills. The cold wet aroma of snow hung in the air.

He’d spent the morning in his office reading his mail and answering a seemingly endless stream of calls from patients. Most were trivial problems easily answered.

Between calls he’d puzzled over why Charles Braden had invited Lucy and him to his home. And stared at the ceiling to the sound of creaky floorboards as Lucy prowled around her room. What was up with her? When she got back from shopping last night, she’d prepared dinner and welcomed Victor with open arms. Then she’d kept them entertained throughout the meal with stories of warlords, strange animals, and field hospital hijinks. Afterward, Victor sat down at the piano and led them through the highlights of great Broadway shows. They belted out the tunes they knew and danced to the ones they didn’t.

Victor had left in high spirits, yet as soon as he was out the door, she’d said she was exhausted and gone directly to bed.

This morning he’d wakened to the sounds of her in the kitchen and the smell of fresh coffee, but when he came down to join her for breakfast she retreated back upstairs, taking her cup with her, apologizing profusely that she had a ton of correspondence to answer and job applications to send out. “After all, by next July, I plan to be a working woman again.”

Why was she avoiding him? From the creaking of the floorboards, she’d seemed to be doing more pacing than writing.

The phone rang for the umpteenth time, bringing him back inside.

“My knees are bothering me again.”

Nell! Mark repressed a sigh, having no patience for their usual merry-go-round today. “When do you want to come in?” he said, trying not to sound too weary.

“Can’t. They’re too swollen. I need one of them house calls. And you bring that young new doctor I hear you’ve been traipsing all over the county with. Maybe she can help me.”

Despite himself, he started to laugh. “Nell, you old fraud.”

“Who are you callin’ old?”

He leaned back in his chair and chuckled again, feeling better for it.

“Are you still interested in that maternity center Braden used to run in Saratoga?” she asked.

Mark leaned forward again. “Yes.”

“Name’s Diane Whigston Lawler. Her place is just off Route 9 toward the town. She was a local girl, good family, married one of them big shots from New York. Shortly after her first child, he divorced her for some model-actress. Bastard had the better lawyers and took the kid plus everything that wasn’t nailed down. Her own family went bankrupt during one of those big savings and loans busts in the eighties. Lives kinda’ poor now.”

She gave him the exact address and telephone number. He recognized the street name, and figured the words “kinda poor” might be an understatement. The place was a trailer park.

“And I’ve been asking around like you wanted,” she continued. “Seeing if anybody noticed Chaz Braden doing anything weird just before Kelly went missing.”

“Any luck?”

“Also checked if Samantha McShane was around the area.”

He shot upright. “Damn it, Nell, I told you don’t do anything of the kind. In fact I gave you specific instructions not to go setting off rumors-”

“No luck with either. But I did come up with a few other tidbits and a name you might find interesting.”

“Who?”

“Be here at seven tomorrow night, and I’ll tell you over dinner.”

“Nell-”

“Don’t forget to bring your lady friend. Do you think she’d mind helping out in the kitchen? I can see if she’s up to scratch.”

“Nell, you stop that kitchen nonsense and tell me right now-”

He was talking to a dial tone.

He punched in her number.

Busy signal.

He asked the operator to interrupt, claiming it was a medical emergency.

The phone was off the hook. He sighed and glanced down at the scrap of paper where he’d jotted the number she’d given him. He dialed it, figuring anything would be more productive than trying to get Nell to behave.

A woman answered.

“Diane Whigston Lawler?” Nell hadn’t said if she still used her married name.

“It’s just Diane Whigston now.”

Her voice was melodious, but deep and a touch husky, the way a smoker’s can get. It also sounded big, and he imagined he was talking to a large woman. “Ms. Whigston, my name is Mark Roper. I’m a physician in Hampton Junction. I got your name from Nell-”

“Ah, of course. She told me you might be calling. I understand you’re interested in the maternity center Dr. Braden used to run.”

“Yes. I wonder if I could meet you and ask some questions about the place.”

“Sure, but I don’t understand. It’s been twenty-nine years since my son Ronald was born there, and it’s long been closed.”

Diane Whigston must be the only acquaintance of Nell’s who didn’t know about his investigating Kelly’s murder. Otherwise, she’d have guessed right away why he wanted to talk to her. For some reason Nell must not have told her. “Yes, it was a very long time ago, Ms. Whigston. You see, I’m looking into a twenty-seven-year-old murder, that of Kelly McShane. You probably read about the discovery of her body a few weeks ago-”

“So that’s why you wanted to talk about the maternity center? You’re after the Bradens! Well, if Nell had told me that, I never would have agreed to talk with you.” The deep tones had suddenly turned shrill.

“No, Ms. Whigston, please, I’m not after anyone, just trying to gather as much information-”

“Dr. Charles Braden saved my little Ronnie’s life, period. I’ve got nothing but praise and admiration for the man.”

“I understand-”

“Ronnie wouldn’t breathe when he came out, and that man went rushing out of the delivery room with him, giving mouth-to-mouth as he ran, and drove him to the hospital himself. Didn’t even wait for an ambulance. One week later I first got to hold my baby when he personally transported my child back to me and placed him in my arms, just before I went home. I’ll never forget that day, or my gratitude to Dr. Braden. So I won’t be saying anything against him, ever.”

“Ms. Whigston, please-”

“And Ronnie wasn’t the only one he did that for. I’ve since met other mothers who say the same thing. And the nurses, they called him the miracle man when it came to saving kids. One told me he even kept an incubator in his car for just such emergencies. You won’t find many former patients or staff willing to bad-mouth him.”

“If you’ll just let me explain-”

He found himself once more talking to a dial tone.

Now he understood why Nell hadn’t told her who he was. Jesus, she could have warned him Diane Whigston was so prickly. Approached properly, the woman might have at least been willing to discuss the routine of the place.

He dialed Nell’s number again. Maybe she could make things right with her friend, and he’d get another chance.

She picked up this time.

“Nell-”

And hung up.

He thought he really hadn’t time for this when his phone rang again.

“Nell?”

“No, it’s me,” said Victor Feldt. “I wanted to say how much I enjoyed last night.”

“Victor! Sorry, I just got cut off – I mean hung up on-”

“Old Nell giving you the gears again? I’ll bet it’s about Lucy. She want to meet her, check her out?”

“No-”

The big man gave a low, knowing chuckle.

It reminded Mark why he hated living in a goldfish bowl. “What can I do for you, Victor?”

“I haven’t made much progress in tracking down who owns Nucleus, but what I found is some pretty weird stuff.”

“Weird?”

“Yeah. The information is buried in a labyrinth of registered ownerships. The amount of subterfuge here is really fishy. I’m staying on this. It’s too strange.”

“Any idea how long it will take?”

“Give me until tomorrow. I also thought of something else we should check out. What if the sudden tightening of security has to do with a request from one of the lab’s clients? Maybe it’s somebody at their end who’s suddenly gone paranoid. Were that the case, would it help you to find out why?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been talking to a few of my contacts at the companies that deal with us, telling them what happened, saying good-bye – you know, that kind of thing – and a few have said they’re not surprised.”

“Not surprised you got fired?”

“Not surprised that someone in their organization might be hypersensitive over an outsider seeing medical data about their staff.”

“Well, they should be. Information like that is supposed to be confidential.”

“What I’m talking about is above and beyond those usual types of concern.”

“How do you mean?”

“There are huge shakeups going on in a host of companies, thousands of high executives being laid off. It shows up in the health plans, their policies not being renewed.”

“So? Layoffs are happening all over the country. It’s because of the economy.”

“Not when they immediately turn around and rehire thousands more new staff. There’s an equal number of new policies on replacements for the people they fired.”

Obviously Victor was off on some wild-goose chase, probably as a way to avoid dwelling on his own firing. “And how would all that make someone freak at my visit to the lab?” Mark asked, attempting to nudge him back to the reality of their current problem.

“I don’t know. But if it were the case, would you want me to find out more about it?” he continued, sounding as eager for approval as a fawning puppy. “Tomorrow, when everybody is back to work from the holiday, I can call some additional contacts and try to get specifics on what’s up, if anything, that might have spooked one of these organizations. If you like, I could even reach a few other people at home today, where they might feel freer to talk.”

“Why not?” Mark said, thinking the whole thing was light-years removed from any connection to Kelly’s murder or Chaz Braden, but even following up leads doomed to go nowhere could be the best thing for Victor right now. Despite his obvious capacity to enjoy good company and be the life of a party, he was so very solitary out here.

“And while I was going through all those records, I found a handful of doctors in New York who had a small account with us much like the one I arranged for you.”

“I don’t follow.”

“You know, puny bits of business from a few private office patients – they stand out amongst our usual giant-sized contracts. What’s really unusual, the master record of all test results ordered by this group isn’t stored here. The system’s flagged to forward them to another terminal, presumably back in New York. The point is, someone high up made the arrangements. That’s head office territory – not like out here, where a guy like me has a certain amount of leeway to pull off what you and I had going, at least, until yesterday. I was thinking you could phone some of these doctors and ask, physician to physician, who they’d made their special deal with in order to set themselves up that way. It might get us closer to the actual owner of the place.”

Not likely, Mark thought as he took down the names. He recognized some of them – a surgeon, a few internists, a gynecologist, and three very prominent family physicians who had taught him at NYCH during his residency. These were top drawer people. Yes, they would have professional ties with Chaz through the hospital, but he couldn’t imagine why they’d need to make a private arrangement with an out-of-the-way facility. Their use of Nucleus Laboratories, even if it turned out Chaz owned the place, would likely be for mundane reasons, probably having to do with the patients’ insurance companies insisting they use a specific testing center. “That’s a fabulous idea, Victor,” he said, continuing to hide his skepticism that any of it would pan out. “I’ll try and contact them tomorrow. Thank you for coming up with it. Believe me, I’m grateful for everything you’re doing.”

As he hung up, Mark made a mental note to call the phone company. The clicks on his line, a recurrent joy of country living, had become annoying.

5:35 P.M.

Snowflakes the size of cotton balls floated onto Lucy’s black hair, where they sparkled like points of a tiara before vanishing. “Battle stations,” she said to Mark under her frosty breath, a gleam in her eye as they climbed the freshly shoveled steps to where Charles Braden stood just behind his butler, who’d swung open front door.

“Lock and load,” Mark muttered back at her.

In seconds they were shaking hands with their host, and the butler took their coats.

Lucy looked stunning in a floor-length, black, body-hugging sweater. “Good evening, Dr. Braden,” she said. “Thank you for inviting me along.”

“Lucy O’Connor. Why, I had no idea you were the beauty the whole town’s been talking about. What a pleasure to see you again.”

“You already know each other?” Mark asked.

“Yes,” Braden said quickly. “I had the pleasure of chatting with Lucy shortly after her arrival at NYCH. A year ago, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was.”

“My, how time flies. Now come on in, and meet my other guests.” He took her arm and led her into the living room.

Mark followed, surprised at the exchange and wanting a chance to ask why she hadn’t mentioned meeting Braden Senior before. At the same time he was overwhelmed by the memories of arriving here as a small child, with Kelly greeting them at the door and leading them in to meet the guests.

“I didn’t think my having met Braden was important,” Lucy whispered, apparently reading the puzzlement on Mark’s face.

They entered a massive room full of young and middle-aged men. Braden introduced them to the nearest group and beckoned to one of the numerous waiters circulating through the room.

Lucy requested champagne.

Mark asked for a beer.

Within moments they had their drinks in hand and Lucy was receiving the lion’s share of attention from the men around them. She acted fascinated with every single one.

Mark recognized the names of at least four or five heads of the Fortune 500 whose firms were headquartered in New York. The ingrained resentment he’d always had for the silver-spoon set stirred deep within him.

Other men walked over to introduce themselves. He barely paid attention, until:

“… Freddy Lawler II, and this is my boy Ronald…”

Mark started at this name, and found himself staring at a small-statured man with delicate features and short-cropped blond hair. He reappraised his audio impression of the kid’s mother, downsizing his mental image by about 50 percent. But he wasn’t curious enough to go over and ask Ronnie if he carried a picture of the woman to be sure. He did wonder if this well-heeled son ever visited Diane Whigston in her trailer park, and if he drove up to her front door in whichever fancy car parked outside was his, or arrived in a taxi to save them both embarrassment at the difference in their economic stations.

He slipped away from where Lucy continued to hold court and parked himself beside a table of hors d’oeuvres, making it a point to be alone and accessible.

He and Lucy suspected Braden wanted a private word with Mark, perhaps to suggest subtly that it would be wise to leave Chaz alone during the investigation. But while Mark went one-on-one with Charles, she would work the crowd, and perhaps succeed at prompting somebody to make a slip about Chaz’s real whereabouts at the time of the ambush. Judging by how readily they fell under her spell, Mark figured she just might pull it off.

At least that had been their plan.

“And you all hunt, do you?” Lucy asked the men arrayed around her. “I have a huge weak spot for venison. My four brothers used to bring in enough to feed our entire family for a winter, and nothing, but nothing, could surpass the taste of that meat prepared in my mother’s marinade…”

Her enthusiasm was so convincing that Mark figured her every word to be true. In any case she had her audience eating out of her hand.

“… so if any of you gentleman are willing to share some of your catch with me, I’d be pleased to remunerate-”

“Love to, Doc!”

“How much do you want?”

“I’ve got a dozen steaks in the freezer with your name on it – my gift to you…”

Mark chuckled at how she’d captivated these weekend hunters.

“… why, thank you gentlemen,” Lucy continued. “But which of you has bagged the most? I wouldn’t want to deprive someone of their sole catch?”

“We could show you later.”

“Yeah, it’s all down in the meat locker.”

“Just at the foot of the back steps.”

“Really? It isn’t bloody, is it? I can’t stand the sight of blood.”

“Oh, of course not,” reassured a very earnest young man with blow-dried black hair. Chipper he’d said his name was. “It’s all been cut into steaks, just like at the meat market-”

Lucy burst out laughing and, laying her hand on his, gave him a wink. “Chipper, you forget what I do for a living.”

He flushed.

The rest roundly laughed.

“Now you quit teasing me, Doc,” Chipper said, breaking into a good-natured smile.

Mark looked around, but Charles didn’t appear to be in the room. Spotting a group of men in a small parlor with sliding doors, he thought his host might be there, and sidled over. As he drew near, he picked up snatches of the conversation.

“… shareholders will bale at the slightest rumor…”

“… exercising my options…”

“… if it gets public…”

But no Charles.

Nevertheless, he strained to hear, thinking he might at least get a tip on which stocks to dump.

“… other CEOs have had worse problems…”

“… the SEC filed charges against Bob last week…”

“… Christ, everyone’s going down like flies these days…”

At that moment Charles appeared out of nowhere, stepped over to the doors, and drew them closed. He turned around and, seemingly only then, spotted Mark. He smiled, and shrugged, almost apologetically. “Businessmen are like doctors,” he said, walking over to take him by the elbow and lead him away. “You can’t even invite them to a party but they clump together and talk shop.”

“Well, I guess that’s true-”

“I wonder if you and I could have a word in private?”

Here we go, Mark thought.

“Of course.”

“Perhaps you’d be kind enough to wait for me in the library. I have to speak with the caterer, but will be along in a minute. You remember the way, don’t you? You used to play there as a child.”

The double wooden doors of polished mahogany were as high as the fifteen-foot ceilings. They opened as soundlessly as he remembered, admitting him to the silent interior. Overhead chandeliers suspended from dark wooden beams cast a dim golden glow over the thousands of book spines that lined the shelves along the walls. Though the room seemed smaller than before, it remained impressive.

Perfect, thought Mark. With the two of them alone, Braden would be more likely to start in with his refined arm-twisting techniques. There’d be no need to keep it polite. That might be more revealing about any family secrets Braden wanted to keep hidden than the nuanced exchanges they’d had thus far in the middle of crowds. Mark might even press him a little – make him defensive about Chaz.

As Mark waited, the soft pungent smell of leather mixed with the caramelized odor of varnish. Closing his eyes, he could have been backin that time when the three people he loved most in the world were as close as the next room, all happily, he’d believed, laughing, eating, and drinking together. Then he felt all the more desolate for the reminder of what he’d lost. “Goddamn it,” he muttered, starting to stroll and read the titles, anything to prevent the past from reinvading his memory. He resented such incursions at the best of times. Somehow, in this house, thoughts of his mother, his father, and Kelly were unseemly fresh and doubly painful.

Yet he found himself heading for the corner he’d liked best – the place where he had curled up on one of the big leather reading chairs with books on travel adventures that were full of wild-animal pictures.

On the way he passed entire sections of medical works, and quickly appreciated the extent of the collection. Interested, he took a closer look.

Initially he saw worn, faded books on obstetrics, some of them almost historical records exhibiting how crude and primitive the profession once was. Others documented more recent history. He pulled down an old leather-bound text dated 1930 and, flipping through it, shuddered at the realities of infant and maternal mortality in the era when his own parents had been born. Ether had been the only anesthetic, sulfa the only antibiotic for infections, and neonatal care for any compromised infants amounted to little more than keeping them warm and hydrated until they died or revived on their own.

The next shelf over contained more up-to-date texts on both childbirth and neonatology, some of them real doorstoppers. Mark remembered his OB rotation under Charles Braden – it had been the man’s last year before retirement – and, whatever he thought of him personally, begrudgingly admitted how excellent he’d been as a teacher. Always on top of current practices, Braden had a wonderful knack for putting those techniques and advances in the context of how things were before.

A few steps farther, he found a whole section of completely contemporary editions, including the latest works on high-risk births, neonatology intensive care, and the management of congenital birth defects. There were scientific publications as well – molecular biology, DNA, the human genome – and tucked alongside them were reprints of articles that Charles Braden coauthored six years ago outlining the potential of screening amniotic fluid for mutated genes to diagnose genetic abnormalities in utero. Handwritten notes in the margins outlined the commercial possibilities of marketing kits to make doing the job easier. Well-thumbed journals with the latest studies in theoretical applications of gene and stem cell therapies completed the collection.

This was not a person who had slipped into retirement and let his profession pass him by. He’d kept up.

On the adjacent shelves, he found the other end of the spectrum – the less noble records of the profession, including yellowed tracts from the thirties and forties that were little more than fascist rants on eugenics. Filled with crude caricatures of Africans pointing out their Negroid features and accompanying texts that were outright racist in attributing inferiority to such physiognomy, these were published in both Boston and New York. Other paperbound manuals hailing from the University of Berlin spewed similar filth about Jews, but had been translated into English by a well-known Manhattan publishing house better known these days for bestsellers by lawyers. Still others were journals that tried to argue the superiority of the white race through exhaustive measurements of cranium sizes on cadavers.

“I see you found my hall of shame,” Charles Braden said from the doorway.

Mark gave a start. He quickly slid one of the works he’d been perusing back into its slot.

“I remember poking through books in here as a kid, Dr. Braden.” He gestured to the room as a whole, hoping to draw attention away from that particular section. “Except I obviously didn’t appreciate then the extent of the medical collection. It’s very impressive.”

“Please, continue to browse. And don’t be embarrassed. Most doctors are drawn to those particular writings. They’re both fascinated and repulsed.” He started toward him, and pointed to the shelves near the end of the wall. “Down there are the big results, the global offspring of these poisonous tracts” – he hooked his thumbs at the odious titles Mark had been looking at- “if they are allowed to bear fruit. Come, take a look. The legacy of hate.”

Not sure what Braden was getting at, or why the man would even collect such despicable material, he hesitated.

“Don’t be shy.” Braden walked to the next set of shelves and ran his hands over the half dozen maroon spines of what resembled an encyclopedia set. “These are bound articles related to war crimes of doctors in Germany and Japan during World War II.” He pulled one out and handed it to Mark. “This author actually does a good job at explaining why genocide occurs.”

As Mark glanced at it, he recognized the name of a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose work he still read regularly in the Herald. Braden had tagged some of the more insightful pieces, often the same ones that Mark remembered clipping and saving when he needed a little extra help sorting out the latest ethnic cleansing on the planet.

Braden moved on to less-weathered volumes. “The study of how our profession has strayed into evil is a pursuit of mine,” he said. “We should all be forced to read the obscenities of science, in order that none of us drift into a similar arrogance.”

Mark picked up the top sheet of a printout that had obviously been taken off the Internet. It reported on recent war crime prosecutions in Tokyo. Included were photos of a vivisection being done on an unanesthetized pregnant woman in a notorious torture camp during Japan’s occupation of Manchuria. The woman had screamed entreaties that her baby be saved as they cut out the womb, read the caption quoting one of the witnesses. He shuddered, and returned it to its place. “Strong stuff.”

“We have our local brand of monsters.” Braden reached up a few shelves and handed Mark a pamphlet written in the early thirties by a Dr. Brown from a town not twenty miles north of Hampton Junction. It argued for the smothering of babies at birth if they have obvious physical defects.

The back of Mark’s throat closed as he tossed the paper onto the nearest shelf. “That’s hideous!”

“Don’t think this guy was that far off the thinking of the time, at least in small places like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was the depression. The good Dr. Brown and every other GP in impoverished, isolated parts of the land would look at a severely deformed baby they’d just delivered and think, What about the family? Barely able to survive now, how will trying to care for this hapless creature sap the little energy and money they have for the healthy siblings? Most doctors might just despair, but some might act – think the right thing to do would be protect the other children from even more abject poverty than they already suffered. Haven’t you ever wondered why there are so few older adults with severe disabilities in the little villages of rural America?”

“You’re kidding. You don’t believe doctors actually smothered infants.”

“And you don’t believe it ever happened.”

Mark felt too startled to speak. He’d heard stories from long ago about midwives doing that kind of thing, but not doctors. “Surely that’s the stuff of rural legends.”

“I think you’re hopelessly naive.”

“Hopelessly naive to say most doctors draw the line at murder.”

“Yes, it is about drawing lines. Except those lines – between right and wrong, life and death – change with the circumstances and the times. Look how blurred it’s getting these days in ICUs with all the high-tech advances we have in keeping people alive.”

Even though Braden’s tone was quiet and polite, almost professorial, Mark felt uncomfortable. Why was the man going on about this? It certainly wasn’t what he’d brought him into the library for. And right now, that was all Mark had an interest in. “Why did you want to see me, sir?” The question sounded more impertinent than he intended, but it got to the point.

The landscape of Braden’s features shifted slightly, from pensive to thoughtful. Not different in a way he could describe, but different.

“I wanted to thank you for the discreet way you’ve been handling your investigation into Kelly’s murder,” he said.

The compliment caught him by surprise. “I haven’t done anything special.”

“That can’t be true, not for Mark Roper. You’re too much like your father. Best damn mind. Inquisitive as hell. That’s what made him such a great doctor. Could have been a leading specialist in any field he chose.”

“He was. He chose to be a country doctor, and was the best at it.”

“Well, yes…”

“Dr. Braden, why did you invite me here?”

“Who do you think killed my daughter-in-law?” he answered without missing a beat.

Mark didn’t reply, beginning to feel all the digressions in their conversation were deliberate, meant to throw him off.

Charles looked him right in the eye. “Your asking around after the memorial service, did it give you any idea who the mystery man was?”

“No.”

“You looking for him?”

“I’m looking at all the possibilities of who her killer might have been.”

“Including my son?”

“To be frank, yes.”

“Who else?”

“That’s not something I’d discuss-”

“The mother?”

“As I said-”

“Any other leads?”

Mark sighed. “No.”

“No? My sources at the hospital tell me you’ve recruited a former classmate of Kelly’s to snoop around for you. Earl Garnet. I looked up his record. Pretty smart. But he seems to be asking the same stale questions you are.”

“As I said, all possibilities-”

“I’m disappointed, Mark. Going after my son is an old idea already pursued to a dead end by the police. And having had Samantha thoroughly investigated by private detectives without results, even I have to admit that going after her is an old idea, too.”

So much for putting Braden on the defensive about Chaz, Mark thought, irritated he hadn’t managed his host the way he’d planned. He could either walk out, or stand here and defend himself. “It’s fresh ideas about old suspects that I’m after,” he finally said, and started for the door.

“What if I told you I had a fresh lead?” Braden called after him.

“Yeah, yeah.”

An insinuating silence worked on Mark’s back until, halfway to the exit, he turned and asked. “Okay, what is it?”

“I might be able to give you a new suspect, somebody who no one else has thought of.”

“Who?”

“I can’t tell you right now. But I’m working on a promising idea. Just give me a few days to verify what I’ve found. All I’m asking in the meantime is that you hold off on any move against Chaz.”

Mark slowed. He finally had the opening he needed to put Braden on the defensive. Wheeling around, he jabbed his forefinger at him. “So your privileged, fifty-something brat can take another shot at me? There’s a fresh idea for you!”

Braden frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh yeah? Monday night someone fired a bullet through the window of my Jeep, remember? Dan Evans questioned you about it.”

“Why, yes. I knew that. It was a terrible incident. But you can’t be suggesting Chaz had anything to do with it.”

Mark said nothing.

The pleasantness on Braden’s face withered a shade. “Of course you know the penalty for libel, defamation of character, and unprofessional conduct.”

“Are you threatening me, Charles? You did tell me to call you Charles, didn’t you? Well, Charles, some people might construe that kind of language as an attempt to intimidate me while I’m doing my duty as coroner.”

The older man’s eyes seemed sad. “What I’m doing is trying to tell a young hothead whose father used to be a guest here, at Kelly’s insistence, by the way, that if he picks too much at a scab, he’s liable to find unexpected pus.”

“And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means sometimes we’re forced to face unpleasant truths, aren’t we?”

“Oh?”

“Did you ever wonder why, when your family visited here your mother looked so unhappy? Of course, maybe you were too young to notice that sort of thing. But she used to hang around in the background, scowling, all while your father laughed and enjoyed Kelly’s company.”

Mark felt as if a snake that had long lay sleeping deep in his subconscious suddenly stirred. “If you must know, she despised how you and your friends treated my father.” His throat tightened on his words as he spoke.

“But that’s the reason she’d give, isn’t it?”

A terrible coldness formed in his chest. “What are you getting at?”

“Just remarking on how lonely your father must have been during the years after your mother died. He and Kelly spent a lot of time alone during that period, didn’t they?”

“Son of a bitch!” Mark started for the old man.

“Are you menacing me now, Mark?” Charles said. His voice rose only a shade louder, but it reverberated with authority.

Mark checked himself, his fists clenched.

“Innuendo can be so damaging, almost as much as the lies that have been told against my son.”

“Is there a point to this, Charles?”

“Only that this case could get a lot messier than you ever imagined unless you slow down. What’ll happen to your credibility once the press gets even a whiff of the possibility you could be covering up an indiscretion on the part of your father with the victim?”

“What!”

“It’s not me you have to worry about. I already told you, I may have the evidence to hand you Kelly’s murderer in a matter of days and end this nastiness for all of us while protecting the reputations of the innocent, your dad’s included. So in the meantime, back off, young man.”

Mark stood still, his insides tightening as he contained his fury. He’d been outflanked and trapped.

He pivoted on his heel and strode down the corridor back into the salon, unsure how long he could keep from throttling the manipulative bastard.

Lucy was still surrounded by her newfound admirers. He walked up to where she held court. “Sorry to interrupt,” he announced, “but Dr. O’Connor and I have to leave. We’ve got a patient in the oven that needs basting.”

She looked startled, but said lightly, “He just means my turkey.”

“By the way,” Mark continued, “I hope you boys are more careful with your rifles than the asshole who took a shot at me two nights ago. It happened on a country road not twenty miles from here.”

The men fell quiet.

“What are you saying, Dr. Roper?” Braden asked, having rushed in a dozen seconds behind Mark.

“Oh, I think you know. Just some of my ‘fresh thinking’ again. Since you already told Sheriff Evans that Chaz was sick and headed back to his New York apartment that night, I thought I’d ask a few of his friends what happened. Maybe they know something about it.”

Braden stiffened. “I’ll have you know that my guests are all excellent marksmen.” His normally genial tone had turned to ice. “Harrison here is even a regular participant in the Marlborough hunt. Besides, these men didn’t arrive until Tuesday. So if you’re suggesting any of them could be part of that unfortunate incident, you’re not only unforgivably rude, but sorely mistaken.”

“Really? I’m merely advising everybody with a gun to be careful. Very careful.”

Before anyone could say a word he took Lucy’s arm and walked out of the room.

“You sure do know how to start a war, Mark Roper,” she said once they were out on the highway. Her tone sounded more amused than critical.

He could barely speak, still shaken by the slimy insinuations Braden had made. Of course they weren’t true, he kept telling himself. But the press would have a field day with that kind of salacious garbage. And he’d better improvise something to explain himself to Lucy. She was looking at him expectantly, obviously awaiting an explanation for their abrupt departure. “Sorry for losing it back there. I just wanted to shake their above-it-all, smug-assed attitudes. And that house, it stirred up a lot of memories, from when Mom and Dad were alive.”

She didn’t reply, but he could feel her studying him as he drove. His knuckles hurt, he gripped the steering wheel so hard, and his clenched teeth made his jaw ache. “So what did you learn from the boy’s club?” he asked, her silence getting to him.

“You mean besides the fact they’re sexist, racist, xenophobes?”

“That deep, are they?”

“Creeps are the same the world over – desperate to find like-minded creeps. They throw out their filth like feelers. And once Braden went off with you, they became outright talkative. I’d say that your investigation of Kelly’s murder doesn’t faze any of them. It’s amazing what men will tell a woman if she shows the least interest in their work or hobbies and comes across just the tiniest bit slutty.”

“You acted slutty?”

She cut the darkness with a grin. “Just a little. Purely to get information.”

“Such as?”

“Three of them gave me their private cell numbers.”

“I’m not surprised. Those young bucks couldn’t take their eyes off you.”

“I’m talking about their fathers.”

He forced a chuckle. “You learn anything more useful?”

“Not much. Like they said, they’re here to hunt, though they seemed more interested in talking about their financial empires. One thing’s clear. They’re all pretty enthralled by their host. Especially how he greases the chute for them when it comes to medical matters.”

“Greases the chute?”

“They kept bragging how, thanks to Charles, they had access to the best specialists in New York. That’s something I notice a lot in Manhattan – people boast about their doctors with the same passion they show for cars, houses, or favorite baseball teams. Trouble is, they can’t all be right.”

He chuckled easier this time. “Did any of them let slip they’d been up here before Tuesday?”

“They were too busy asking if men minded when I checked their prostate. Told them I had guys lining up for a second opinion.”

He laughed and felt the coiled spring in his chest unwind a turn or two. “Did anyone say anything about Chaz being there?”

“I was roundabout in asking, so as not to put them on guard. Told them I knew him through my residency, which is true, and that I wanted to say hello. To a man they said he was in New York, down with the flu.”

“Did you believe them?”

“I think they believed it.”

More Braden alibis, he thought, sinking back into the driver’s seat. They passed the floodlit grounds of Nucleus Laboratories. The sodium lamps cast the swirling snow in a giant web of yellow light, at the center of which sprawled the darkened building.

He’d phone Victor Feldt in the morning, although he wasn’t optimistic about finding any leads there. But the prospect of calling up the list of doctors Victor had provided him with seemed a tad more interesting now. They were an A-list, the kind of physicians, apparently, that Charles Braden referred his friends to.

Victor heard the car drive up.

He switched off his computer screen and peeked out the window.

Four men in bright ski outfits got out of a red sedan.

Lost tourists? He opened the front door before they came all the way up the walk. “Evening. Can I help you-”

That’s when he saw the black stubby cylinders two of the men carried at their sides, muzzles pointed to the ground.