The Professional

Chapter 38

THE MEDICAL CENTER was a two-story brick building with a lot of glass windows, and a parking lot beside it. When I parked, Hawk got out with me.

“You going to hang around out here?” I said to Hawk. “And further integrate the region?”

“Must be nurses here,” Hawk said, and resumed residence on my front fender.

I went in to talk to Dr. Doucette. It took a while, but he squeezed me in between patients. He was a lean, fiftyish man with silvery hair combed straight back. He looked like he might play racquetball.

I gave him my card.

“Mary Brown called me, so I know who you are,” he said. “I’m Paul Doucette. I haven’t much time, and there are obviously issues of confidentiality. That given, how can I help you?”

“Tell me what you can about Goran Pappas,” I said.

“I interviewed him and found him a reasonably coherent young man with a passion for women, particularly women already with another man.”

“Any reason for that?”

“The interest in other men’s women?” Dr. Doucette said. “Probably, but it didn’t seem to consume him. He seemed perfectly able to control it if he chose to. His life didn’t make him unhappy, and he appeared to present no particular threat to society.”

“So you had nothing much to treat him for,” I said.

“Correct. I told the police and the college that in my opinion, he was well within the normal range of appropriate behavior.”

“Did you explore the other-men’s-women business with him?”

“I did.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

“No.”

“Would I be revealing my ignorance,” I said, “if I suggested that if I were looking into it, I’d start with his mother and father.”

“In my business,” Doucette said, “as perhaps in yours, it is sensible to start with the most obvious and see where it leads.”

“Can you tell me where it led you?”

“No,” he said. “I can’t. But perhaps you can tell me why you want to know.”

I smiled.

“Just because I don’t know, I guess.”

“Has Pappas committed a crime?”

“Well, sort of.”

“ ‘Sort of’?” Doucette said.

I told him a brief outline of the Gary Eisenhower story.

Doucette nodded.

“So,” he said. “I gather that from your perspective, though he won’t be punished for the blackmail, the case is resolved.”

“Yes.”

He looked at his watch.

“And you’ll settle for that,” he said.

“Yes.”

“For what it’s worth,” he said. “I agree with you.”

“It’s not perfect,” I said.

“It never is,” Doucette said.

“But I’ll take it,” I said.

“I do not believe Pappas is a bad man,” Doucette said. “He is, by and large, what he appears to be.”

“So you’ll take it, too,” I said.

“I did,” Doucette said.

He looked at his watch again. I nodded and stood. We shook hands. And I headed out to the parking lot to see how many nurses Hawk had wrangled.