The Society

CHAPTER 15

“I miss you, Daddy.”

“I miss you, too, sport. We’ll see each other next week. Meanwhile, just keep oiling that new glove and then, with the ball in the pocket, tie it up like I showed you with one of those heavy rubber bands we bought.”

“O-okay.”

“Danny, it’s okay to cry if you want to, but please know that I’m all right and everything’s going to be fine. It’s just going to take a little time. The things that have been said and written about me aren’t true, and before long everyone will know that. Okay?”

“Okay. Sean’s mother won’t let him come over here to play anymore.”

“I’m so sorry. That must make you very sad.”

“Only a little. Sean’s a jerk most of the time, and he wasn’t my best friend anyway.”

“Just the same, it’s got to be hard for you.”

“We know you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“And that’s all that matters to me. Now, I’ll see you both next week, and before too long everything will be back to normal. Got that?”

“Got it.”

“You’re a brick.”

“You’re a wall.”

“You’re iron.”

“You’re steel.”

“Your. . nose is running.”

“Da-ad.”

Will said good-bye and set the receiver down slowly.

“You bastards,” he muttered, at once sickened and furious at the pain that the twins were experiencing. “You fucking bastards.”

Augie Micelli’s story had been a heavy dose of perspective for him, but the reality of his situation was still overwhelming and, it seemed at the moment, virtually hopeless. Whoever had set out to destroy him had done a masterful job. He was a rag doll, hung out to dry and swinging helplessly in the breeze. Even worse, aside from a few friends like Benois Beane, he was alone in the certainty of his innocence. There was no grass-roots crusade mounting, no letter-writing campaign, no pass-it-on e-mails. Even his partners and a number of his friends seemed to have stepped back and taken a wait-and-see position.

You can only do what you can do, he reminded himself for the thousandth time. You can only do what you can do.

He was sifting aimlessly through the mound of mail on the coffee table when the phone began ringing. The caller ID read simply ERROR. Will hesitated. Then, both curious and prepared to hang up, he picked up the handset.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Will Grant,” the electronically distorted voice said. “Your life has certainly been quite eventful since we last spoke.”

Will wondered if Patty was on top of this. She hadn’t given him any instructions in terms of whether or not he needed to keep the killer on the line for any specific length of time, like the cops in the movies always tried to do. In fact, she hadn’t even told him whether the tap on his line was done at his phone, at the line outside, or at the phone company. Stay calm but sound upset, he told himself. Calm but upset.

“I don’t want you to call me anymore,” he pleaded. “Give yourself up and I’ll see to it you get the best therapist around. You’re sick. You need help.”

“I need help? Goodness, but those are strong words from a man who has done what the papers and TV say you’ve done. Face-first into a patient’s incision. That sort of publicity isn’t good for our cause, Dr. Grant. Not good at all. We have no place in this crusade for drug addicts.”

“I’m not one of you, and I’m not a drug addict.”

“Oh, but you are. These managed-care companies are your enemy just as they are ours. I read where you are claiming to have been set up.”

“I was.”

“Well, if not one of the managed-care companies you exposed at Faneuil Hall, then who? Was it Halliday? Because if it was, he could and should be moved up the list, say to tonight.”

“Stop it! Please, you’ve got to stop this insanity!”

“Funny, that’s precisely what we begged our mother’s so-called caregivers. You’ve got to stop her insanity, we told them.”

A mental-health patient! This is all about a mental-health patient. Will flashed on the many instances he had encountered over the years of managed-care companies refusing detox or even counseling for alcoholics and cutting short hospitalizations for psychiatric cases, even though there was concern that the patient was or might be suicidal. Of all the patients the industry had shortchanged since its rise to power, those with mental illness headed the list.

“Did your mother kill herself?” he asked. “Is that what’s behind all this?”

“When you have proven yourself reliable, Dr. Grant, we will increase your level of responsibility and knowledge. In the meantime, if you have any information as to who might have set you up, or you need to contact us for any reason, any reason at all, simply place a personal ad in the Herald containing the phrase In war there are casualties. We will contact you. Meanwhile, I suggest that you stay safely indoors tonight. The piper’s on the loose and he must be paid. Good day, Dr. Grant.”

“Wait!. .”

The tension had become almost unbearable around the state police in general and among the Middlesex detectives in particular. It had been over a week since the managed-care killer had been heard from-a week that coincided with Will Grant’s bizarre drug overdose in the OR. Spurred on by what he and Jack Court considered Patty’s reckless and potentially disastrous solo visit to the apartment of their only suspect, Brasco was keeping the pressure on her with a constant barrage of callous remarks and a string of time-consuming ticky-tack assignments related to their case, the latest of which was reinterviewing the security people in the Fredrickston Medical Arts Building. Meanwhile, there had been no letup in the day-to-day business of robberies, assaults, drug deals, and various other demonstrations of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man and to society. The result, from the CO down to the rawest rookie, was stress.

The afternoon was heavily overcast and more humid than any early spring day had the right to be. It was ten after three when Patty swung the Camaro into her spot and made her way through the sparsely patronized mall to her office. There was yet another meeting scheduled with Court to review the lack of progress on their biggest, most visible case. In order to appease Brasco, Patty had not only interviewed those security people on duty the night before and the day of the killer’s intrusion into Will’s office, but she had tracked down all the personnel who had covered the company for the past month. Not surprisingly, she had come away with nothing except the hassling she was about to get for being late to Court’s meeting.

She punched in her code on the security pad, waved to veteran Brian Tomasetti, who was building a pyramid of magnetic balls on the top of a Dunkin’ Donuts carton, and hurried past Brasco’s empty cubicle. She paused at the door to her own space long enough to toss her jacket onto the back of her chair, and was just about to race off when she saw the light flashing on her voice mail. Even before she keyed in her password, she knew it was trouble. Three messages. The first was prefaced by Gil Kinchley at the phone company-the man who had turned the court order she had obtained into a wiretap.

“Well, Sergeant Moriarity,” he said, “I think this is what you’ve been waiting for.”

Barely breathing, she sank into her chair, the receiver pressed against her ear, and listened to the eerie exchange between Will and the killer.

“It’s Gil again,” the second message said. “Our people say he-if it even is a he-was probably using a call diverter, more likely two. It’s like call forwarding, only it doesn’t go through us. The technology is readily available in any spy store. The equipment is well made, very effective, and makes a call almost impossible to trace. Ring me if you need anything. We’ll keep on this.”

The third message was from Will.

“Patty, it’s Will. I hope you got that. Call and let me know what you think and what I’m supposed to do. I tried keeping him on the phone as long as I could.”

Wayne Brasco appeared at the doorway, startling her.

“Sergeant, are you going to join the rest of us at the meeting you’re already late for, or are you going to exercise a woman’s prerogative to talk on the phone no matter what?”

“I think you’d better bring Lieutenant Court in here,” she said, ignoring the remark.

“Tell me again,” Court said after he, Patty, and three other detectives had listened to the message on speaker for the second time. “When did the call come in?”

Patty knew this was coming. She also knew she deserved it.

“Two hours ago.”

“But you just picked the message up now?”

“I had meant to forward it to my cell phone, but I was racing around so much I forgot.”

Ask that gorilla next to you why I was racing around so much.

“So we’ve lost two hours.”

We wouldn’t have had this tap at all if I hadn’t gone out and gotten it! she wanted to scream.

“There’s still time,” she said.

“To do what?” This time it was Brasco.

“He’s going to kill tonight.”

“A brilliant deduction, Mrs. Holmes.”

Patty stood and glared at Brasco.

“Back to my office, everyone!” Court snapped, intercepting any escalation in the hostilities. He waited until the others had gone past him, then stepped in front of Patty. “Moriarity, we’re having enough trouble without losing two hours like this,” he said.

“I understand. I’ll be more careful from now on.”

“And another thing.”

“Yes?”

“What’s going on with this guy Grant that he’s calling you Patty?”

“I. . um. . I don’t know.”

She had never been much of a liar, and it was clear from her CO’s expression that he wasn’t buying her denial.

“You just be careful,” he said. “Be damn careful.”

Without waiting for a response, Court turned and headed back to his office. Patty snatched her briefcase from the floor and followed.

“All right,” Court said when the team had settled back in his office, “thoughts?”

“I still think Grant’s dirty in this,” Brasco said. “I think he’s playing us like a violin. His big screwup was overdosing on that drug. Now it’s damage control for him-using someone from that damn Society of his to make it seem like he isn’t involved in these killings.”

“Patty?”

“I think the call strongly suggests Grant is innocent, but at the moment that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the call also implies someone is going to get killed tonight.”

“So?”

Patty withdrew a manila file folder from her briefcase and opened it.

“Well, believe it or not, there are ninety-seven managed-care or health-insurance companies of one kind or another headquartered in Massachusetts alone-HMOs, PPOs, MCOs-alphabet soup. Most of them are within thirty miles of Boston. There are another twelve in New Hampshire and a few more in Vermont and Maine. If we limit ourselves to this state and eliminate the three companies where someone’s already been killed-and I’m not at all sure we should do that-we have ninety-four companies to contact and warn. I have a list of them here with phone numbers and a contact person, usually the membership or PR coordinator.”

There was silence while the group waited for a reaction from Court. Patty sensed that the last thing he wanted to do was to find any merit in her suggestion, but she also knew contacting the CEOs of the companies was the thing to do.

Finally, Court inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly.

“Okay, we have enough people here to make these calls over the next hour or two. Might as well include the companies that have already had someone murdered. What do we tell them-just for all their executives to be careful?”

“Don’t go walking around alone,” Patty said. “Bring a guard along when they walk to their car. Keep their personal cars out in the open, not in their garage where someone can work an explosive into place without being seen.”

“Is it worth notifying the TV and radio stations?”

“I don’t know. The killer must suspect that Will Grant’s phone is tapped, otherwise he wouldn’t take the sort of precautions he has. But if we go public, we remove any doubt. I hate to put the guy in harm’s way.”

“I say go with it,” Brasco blustered. “Grant’s a damn drug addict. Almost killed his patient. The execs who have been murdered were all upstanding citizens. They all were big into charitable causes.”

“So is Will Grant,” Patty snapped. “He started the Open Hearth soup kitchen in Fredrickston when he was a medical student, and he still volunteers there.”

“That doesn’t change anything, and neither does your grandstanding here. You just conveniently neglected to mention that list you’re holding is one I told you to put together.”

“You know, Brasco, I’ve just about had it with you, you sexist-”

“Enough!” Jack Court slammed his fist on his desk. “Moriarity, divide up those phone numbers. I’m warning you, you and Wayne better find a way to work together on this thing, or one of you is going to go. And I’m warning you about something else, too. Keep your personal life separate from your work.”

Forcing Court’s warning to the back of her mind, Patty made the twenty or so calls she had been assigned. The effort to alert all of the managed-care CEOs in the state seemed akin to trying to stop an elephant with a pop gun, but at least they would have done what they could do. The best they could hope for was that the killer’s dramatic proclamation about the piper being on the loose and needing to be paid was his way of keeping the police off balance-one of the I’m Smarter Than You Are ego games that ultimately led to the capture or death of so many like him.

Now there was nothing more to do but sit down and analyze the tape that had been made of the killer’s call. Not surprisingly, Brasco had again managed to maneuver her out of the loop by suggesting that he and Court meet with the new profiler to pore over the recording. Patty was assigned to contact the cryptographer and, even though there were no new alphabet clues, to go over the letters they did have in light of the new information on the tape. She had a different idea, but it wasn’t one she wanted to discuss with her CO.

She wasn’t surprised when she called Will to find him at home and anxious for company. He was openly relieved to hear that, in her mind at least, any lingering doubt about his not being connected to the killings was gone. What she didn’t share with him, but grudgingly acknowledged to herself, was that for days she had been looking for the opportunity to see him again.

It was almost seven by the time she pulled into a parking space marked GUEST, not far from Will’s condo. On the drive over, she listened to Yo-Yo Ma’s contemplative score from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Spurred on by the horrible events of Will’s week, she found herself trying to rank some of the worst things that had ever happened to her. Certainly, her mother’s illness and death headed the list, and there were some tragedies over the years that had befallen her friends. But most of the rest, dating back to middle school, it seemed, centered about bad choices she had made in men, including last year’s follies with Jerry Parkhurst, a wildly attractive and successful mergers-and-acquisitions attorney, who lived in a stunning waterfront apartment in Charlestown.

Parkhurst seemed like a potential keeper-a match for a lifetime-until after they had finally slept together following their fourth or fifth date, when he almost casually mentioned that in addition to his penthouse bachelor pad, he also had a sixteen-room mansion in Newton, where he lived “unhappily” with his wife and two children. That was a bad one, and would have been even more painful if she had actually fallen in love with him. But with images of the vivid imprint of her hand on the side of his face, and some tincture of time, the sleaze had become a relatively distant memory. In terms of pain, it was certainly nothing compared to what Will was going through now.

With Jerry Parkhurst strutting through her brain like Harold Hill in The Music Man, Patty rang Will’s bell.

“Be right down,” Will called from the window above.

Dressed in rumpled chinos, a light-blue button-down, white socks, and slightly worn Nikes, he looked every bit like a man who had lost his medical license, was facing criminal drug and manslaughter charges, and was being harassed by a serial killer.

“You okay?” she asked.

Will made no attempt to mask his discouragement.

“I can handle everything that’s happening to me,” he said, “but people aren’t being kind to my kids. That I can’t handle. Forgive me for saying it, but I really want to kill some of them.”

“I don’t think I’d do very well at dealing with that, either.”

Patty accepted the offer of a Diet Coke, set her tape recorder on the coffee table, and motioned that it was okay for Will to sit on the couch where they both could have access to the control buttons. The distance between them was the same as when he was on the recliner, but she knew there was something more to the sensation of having him sitting there. In her head, Jerry Parkhurst and Jack Court were engaged in some sort of heated discussion that she decided not to try to overhear.

“Let’s start by listening to the whole conversation with no interruptions,” she suggested. “Then we’ll play it again and again if necessary until we both feel we’ve squeezed every ounce of juice from it.”

It was the fifth time Patty had listened to the eerie exchange. While the gender of the caller was electronically obscured, the cadence and choice of words made her almost certain it was a man.

“Do you think he’s going to kill someone tonight?” Will asked as she clicked off the tape and rewound it for another pass.

“I’m hoping, praying, he’s just jerking our chain,” she replied. “Toying with us.”

“He doesn’t seem like the toying type to me.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know-maybe because this is a vendetta-anger but with a point to be made, and maybe a demand somewhere down the road. This person-these people if you believe all those references to we-is avenging the loss of someone they loved.”

“I see your point, but what about the letters? Aren’t they some sort of game?”

“I don’t know. Dramatic effect, maybe. Maybe the killer expected the press would glom on to the letter thing right away, and the publicity and speculation would go through the roof. People, the National Enquirer, Larry King-the works.”

“You think they’re going to spell the mother’s name?”

“That would be my first guess if it didn’t seem so obvious and didn’t point directly at the killer.”

“Well, I hope you’re wrong about him being totally serious, Will. Because if this guy kills again, he gets two for one.”

“Explain.”

“My CO has made it clear that unless we produce a break, and soon, the team on this case is going to be revamped. He neglected to say, ‘Starting with Moriarity,’ but he didn’t have to.”

“In that case, let’s listen to that tape again,” Will said. “The guy keeps saying ‘us.’ Let’s see if we can convince ourselves once and for all that there are more than one of them. Then maybe we can get a pen and some paper and see if we can come up with any other hints.”

“I really appreciate your help with this,” Patty said, “especially with all you’re going through yourself.”

“I need to get my mind off my own stuff.”

Without either of them orchestrating things, Patty slid a few inches closer, and Will gently lowered his arm down around her waist. She hesitated, then set her head on his shoulder. For a time, neither of them moved.

“Do you think we’re just making our bad situations worse?” she asked.

Will stroked her hair.

“Not from where I’m sitting,” he said.