The Society

CHAPTER 28

The Excelsius Cancer Center was set on a verdant lot in the bedroom town of Moorland, four miles west of Fredrickston. Within five minutes of Will’s 911, the first of what would be nine police cars from three jurisdictions arrived. The Cancer Center was cordoned off, and patients with appointments were told to reschedule. Seated alone in one corner of the mammography unit reception room, Will waited until a graying, pot-bellied Moorland police officer had finished taking a statement from Susan and motioned that it was his turn. On the way over, he stopped briefly to speak with her.

“Just another routine day at the office,” he whispered.

“Poor little guy. So, with those two letters, do you think it was the same person as killed the others?”

“I don’t know what to think. This isn’t the usual high-level target or even the MO of the managed-care killers, but those two alphabet letters would certainly suggest that’s who did this.”

“You still think it’s more than one.”

“I do. In fact, it’s a little hard to believe Newcomber would have allowed a single person to truss him up like that without putting up a fight. The office looked just like it did when I was here before, and you saw when I slid open his drawer that his gun was right there, so I don’t think there was a struggle.”

“I don’t know about you,” Susan said, “but I can handle this sort of thing in the hospital a lot better than I can out here in the real world.”

“I understand. Same here. You think a heart attack?”

“Torture first, then heart attack. I didn’t see any wound that looked as if it could have been mortal. I wonder if he survived long enough to tell them whatever it was they wanted to know.”

“Maybe they didn’t want to know anything. Maybe they were just doing it for the fun of it.”

“Ugh.” Susan shuddered, then put on her trench coat. “Well, I’ve got to get back to the hospital. After this little adventure, I’m really not up for doing any surgery, but my poor varicose-vein lady is already there and, believe it or not, they’re holding the OR for me.”

“Give ’em heck,” Will said wistfully.

“Listen, my friend, before you know it, you’re going to be back in the OR, beating yourself into the ground again.”

“I hope so.”

“We’re all pulling for that to happen.”

All minus one, Will thought.

“Thanks,” he said. “Any ideas what we should do about Grace’s missing X-rays?”

“Not really. I’m not certain there’s anything we can do. Let’s talk about it later.”

“Fine. Thanks again for coming here with me, Suze.”

“You’ll understand if next time I beg off, huh?”

“I won’t even bother asking.”

She motioned toward the window.

“Looks like my cab’s here.”

“I owe you one.”

“At least.”

As Susan headed off, over her shoulder Will could see the portly Moorland police officer speaking with a new arrival-a tall, angular man wearing a neatly pressed, belted tan trench coat. Moments later, the man quickly approached Will.

“Dr. Grant, Detective Court, State Police. If you’ll wait right over there, I’ll be with you in a couple of minutes.”

Court. Patty’s CO. He had to know where she was.

For fifteen minutes Will waited. The crime-scene people came and hauled their equipment down the hall. Soon after, an ambulance crew arrived and wheeled off Martha Medeiros, who was now virtually catatonic. Will recalled the pride in her expression as she boasted about her unusual skill with names and faces. He found himself wondering if the killers thought for even a moment about the spouses, friends, children, employees, and other victims of their zealous beliefs. He knew it was a stupid question.

“So, Grant, another death, and here you are.”

Court had come up from his left and now stood there, staring down at him with piercing, slate-gray eyes.

“Here I am,” Will echoed sweetly.

Court had already set the tone for their exchange, so Will felt there was nothing to be gained by trying to act as if the two of them were on the same side. The detective pulled a chair around to face him and settled in, his keen eyes still probing.

“You going to be able to shed any light on this?”

“I saw those two letters on the pen holder in there, if that’s what you mean.”

“So you think your phone pal is responsible for this murder, too?”

“It does seem like a logical conclusion.”

“For someone who drugged his way out of medicine, you are a smug son of a bitch. I can see why Brasco doesn’t believe you.”

“I couldn’t care less what Brasco thinks of me-you, either, for that matter. Where’s Detective Moriarity?”

“Where were you last night at nine?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“You going to answer my question, or do you want to see how miserable I can make your life?”

“Where’s Moriarity?”

“I’m going to give you five seconds to answer me, then I’m going to walk away. If I do that, you can count on being arrested before you leave this building. Now, where were you last night?”

Before three of those seconds could elapse, a young, acne-faced, uniformed policeman came rushing over.

“Lieutenant Court,” he said with breathless excitement, “the station just radioed. The victim’s got a record, sir. Ten years ago. Molesting a young boy in Fort Worth, Texas.”

Court’s glare could have frozen magma.

“You get the fuck home, right now. You’re suspended.”

“But-”

“Get out of here. Tell your CO I’ll speak with him later, and after that go sit in a corner and think about what you just did.”

“But-”

“Go!”

Will watched as the decimated young man shuffled toward the door, still, it appeared, in the dark as to what he had done wrong.

“A little hard on the lad, doncha think?” Will said.

“He deserved worse for speaking like that in front of a witness. You’re next if you keep dicking around with me. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m not in a very good mood. Now, where were you at nine last night?”

Will sighed and decided this was not the time to stand up to the man.

“I was with Augie Micelli.”

“The Law Doctor?”

“That’s right. Now, where is she?”

“All night?”

“From eight o’clock until this morning.”

“If you’re lying, you’re toast.”

“There were three or four others with us at nine. They’ll vouch that I was there. Now, where is she?”

“She’s in your hospital. If you hadn’t gone and gotten yourself thrown off the staff, you’d probably know that.”

Shot. . fell. . Camp Sunshine. . blood clot on the brain. . operated on. . intensive care. .

Only a few words in Court’s abbreviated explanation registered, but they were devastating.

“I need to get out of here,” Will said.

“You’ll stay until I’m done with you.”

“Dr. Hollister was in there with me and she’s already given a statement. I’m going.”

“Listen, we know all about you and Sergeant Moriarity making dirty together.”

Will nearly leapt at him.

“We’re grown-ups,” he managed.

“Fuckups would be a better way to put it. She’s in a coma, Grant, so rushing over there won’t make any difference.”

“Neither will talking to you,” Will snapped.

Before Court could react, Will sprang up and raced out the door.

“Get back here!” he heard the detective shout. “Dammit, Grant, this is a murder case!”

Half expecting to hear a gunshot from behind him, Will raced across the parking lot and scrambled into his Jeep.

“I knew it,” he said out loud to himself. “I knew something had happened to her.”

He screeched into a U-turn and sped out of the parking lot.

Moments later, a dark-blue Mercury sedan pulled out from between two parked cars and followed at a professional distance.

As usual, the main parking lot at Fredrickston General was full, as were the two rows reserved for physicians. Will finally found a place on the street a block away. He entered through the main lobby and, eyes down, melted into the crowd and carefully skirted the lone security guard on duty. Even though the clothing bag and OR shoes had been found, it was unlikely Sid Silverman would lift his ban at the hospital until he absolutely had to.

Like Brasco, Court, and so many others, Silverman had formed his opinion of Will’s guilt much quicker than he would ever let it go. Even if the insoles of the red Chuck Taylors were as loaded with fentanyl as Will and Micelli expected them to be, it was likely that many of his detractors would still believe he was somehow responsible. As he hurried up to the ICU, he wondered about those inmates who were awaiting execution on death row in so many states, all the while knowing that they were innocent.

As he entered the unit, Will could see a crowd gathered in cubicle 1. For an instant he thought there was a code blue in progress, but the lack of frantic movement suggested otherwise. Then, over at the bedside, he saw Peter Ng, the slope-shouldered neurosurgeon who for several years had been a member of the Hippocrates Society, albeit not a very active one.

“That Detective Moriarity in One?” he asked the nearest nurse.

“Yes, but, Dr. Grant, we have instructions that-”

“The ban’s been lifted. Besides, she’s a relative.”

Without waiting for her response, he walked confidently past and into the glass-enclosed room. Ng, watched by two nurses, a resident, and a couple of medical students, was peering through an ophthalmoscope, examining the arteries, veins, and optic nerves inside Patty’s eyes.

To the left of the bed, on the X-ray view box, were two films-one showing a panel of CT images, and the other a pre-op side view of Patty’s skull. Even from ten feet away, Will could see the fracture-a jagged, three-inch crack, dark against the white of bone. The CT scan, obviously taken before surgery, showed a rather large collection of blood beneath the area of the fracture.

Unwilling to push to the front of the group, Will peered over the shoulder of one of the med students. Hunched over Patty, Ng was blocking some of his view, but he could still discern that she was motionless and connected by a breathing tube to a ventilator, much as he had been at the beginning of this nightmare.

“I am looking for any blurring of the margins of the optic nerves,” Ng was saying, “and also a loss of the slight pulsations in the veins-not the arteries, but the veins. Either of these findings would be a warning of the buildup of pressure within her skull that would signify brain swelling. At the moment I see no signs of trouble, but I’m going to keep her on steroids just in case. If she remains stable for the next four hours, we’ll pull the breathing tube. How she does from here on out will depend on how long this coma lasts.”

Ng dictated a set of revised orders, which his resident dutifully wrote down. Then he stepped back from the bed and noticed Will. Gratefully, there was nothing in the neurosurgeon’s face to suggest that anything had changed in their always-cordial relationship.

“Got a minute, Peter?”

“Of course. Go ahead, everyone. I’ll meet you all in the hall.” He waited, then turned to Will. “Gosh, it’s good to see you. You all right?”

His concern was genuine. To his left, Will could see more fully the battering Patty had taken. The entire side of her face was contused and swollen. From this angle, she bore little resemblance to the woman who had made such sweet love with him.

“I’m all right,” he said flatly. “Someone set up that drug thing. I still don’t know who or why, but I’m going to find out. It’s been hell, but there’s some light at the end of the tunnel.”

“I’m glad to hear that. You know this woman?”

“She’s a good friend.”

“Well, she should do all right, but I confess I am a bit worried about why she hasn’t woken up.”

Ng reviewed the circumstances of her injury but couldn’t supply any details of why she had been at Camp Sunshine or who the fellow officer was whose life she had saved. Will wished he had paid more attention to Court’s account.

“You can see her fracture,” Ng was saying. “The result was a tear in the middle meningeal artery. As you can see on the CT scan over there, we were lucky to be dealing with epidural blood, not subdural.”

Lucky was an understatement, Will knew. The prognosis from bleeding between the skull and the dura-the protective membrane covering the brain-was not nearly as grim as if the collection of blood was subdural-under the dura, between it and the brain itself.

“But you have no idea why she hasn’t woken up.”

“From what I can tell, she fell twelve feet from a balcony and landed headfirst on a rock with a man’s weight on top of her. I didn’t see any actual brain bruising, but given the concussion from such a blow, I’m not that surprised she hasn’t woken up yet.” He saw the concern in Will’s eyes. “Listen, this is an epidural, not a subdural, and with no major brain contusion. She’s going to wake up, Will, and she’s going to be okay.”

“I’m glad she has you for a doc, Peter,” Will said.

Ng took his hand and shook it.

“I’m glad she has you for a friend,” he replied.

For twenty minutes Will sat in the dimly lit cubicle, listening to the soft, dependable whoosh of the ventilator, the steady beep of the cardiac monitor, and the faint whir of the IV pump-once the sounds of his world, now a hymn to his helplessness. To his right lay the woman who had opened his heart in ways none other had for many years. If they ever got out of this mess-if she ever woke up, if he ever found his way back into medicine-he was going to do things differently. It would be the kids first, then Patty, then maybe some sort of exercise program to get back in shape.

The Society could still have a piece of him, but a smaller one. Managed care had to be stopped, but his role in the battle could and would be less. And as long as the twins wanted to share the Open Hearth experience with him, he would continue signing up there, but he was through working eighty hours a week in the hospital just to break even. He was through living in a chronic state of exhaustion just to keep Maxine from siccing her lawyer hounds on him. He was through saying yes simply because he hadn’t developed the gift of being able to say no.

Over the years since his marriage had begun coming unraveled, what he did had completely overwhelmed who he was. He wouldn’t wish the nightmare of a suspension on any doctor, but in one way, having to endure his suspension had been a blessing. The wonderful paradox was that he was ready now, truly ready, to go back to being a surgeon because he didn’t need to.

He reached across and set his hand on top of Patty’s. Her skin was cool and dry. The monitor overhead showed a regular heartbeat, but just the same he slid his fingertips around her wrist and assured himself that her pulse was strong.

“Any change, Doctor?”

The man’s voice, from just inside the doorway, startled ten or fifteen minutes off Will’s life. He pulled his hand back and spun around. Although he had never seen the man before, he knew it was Tommy Moriarity. Moriarity’s arms were at his sides, his posture ramrod straight. Even through the gloom, Will could see Patty’s eyes and mouth in his, as well as the shape of her face. The policeman was dressed in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt and carried a thin book in one hand.

“She’s stable,” Will said.

“Good.”

“I guess you know who I am.”

“I guess you know who I am, too.”

The two men shook hands awkwardly, and Moriarity crossed to the other side of the bed.

“Does she need that tube?” he asked.

“Dr. Ng, her surgeon, just left. If her condition hasn’t deteriorated after a few more hours, he’s going to have it pulled. She’s tripping the machine on her own right now, and the tube could damage her trachea if it stays in.”

“She got hurt saving a fellow officer’s life.”

“I heard that, but I don’t know who.”

“Wayne Brasco-the man who took over for her.”

Inwardly, Will groaned.

“And he’s okay?” he asked.

“Barely a scratch.”

Shit.

“Do you know what happened?”

“Nobody seems to know. There was some sort of sting operation Brasco set up to catch the managed-care killer. Patty showed up uninvited and tried telling people they were on the wrong track and were being set up. Finally, she knocked Brasco away just as a shot was fired. She took a bullet along the side of her head, then hit a rock when she and Brasco fell.”

“The bullet didn’t do more than stun her,” Will said. “The rock is what did the damage.”

“But she’s going to wake up, right?”

Will looked across Patty’s inert form at her father. For all his gruffness and military bearing, he looked frail and frightened. Still, Will carefully avoided any knee-jerk reassurances.

“Given the sort of injury she had and the location of the bleeding, she could wake up any time. But head injuries are very unpredictable. Until she wakes up, we have every reason to be worried.”

“Thanks for being straight with me,” Moriarity said, rubbing briefly at his eyes. He held up the thin, tattered volume he had carried in. “This is one of her favorite books from when she was growing up; it’s poetry by Emily Dickinson. I thought maybe I’d try reading to her from it.”

“That’s a wonderful idea. When someone is unconscious, we never really know what senses are still working.”

“I wanted her to be a professor, or even a lawyer.”

“She’s a good cop,” Will said.

“I know.”

Well, why in the hell didn’t you ever tell her that? Will wanted to shout out. He stood to go.

“You’re a hero to her,” he said.

“So are you, from what I can tell,” Moriarity replied.

“For what it’s worth, she knows I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“She told me that. At the moment I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt there. But do yourself a big favor, Doc, and don’t ever do anything to hurt her.”

Again, Will held back any reflex reaction. Fathers protect daughters. It was as simple as that-at least it should be.

“You have my number,” he said. “If you have any medical questions, or any questions at all for that matter, please call-just remember that your guys have my phone tapped.”

Will battled back the urge to stop by Sid Silverman’s office to see if there had been any news from the lab. Instead, he walked the block to the Jeep through a raw, gray early afternoon and headed home. The piecemeal sleep he had gotten on Micelli’s pullout, plus the tension generated by the events of the day, were taking their toll. All he could think of was an hour or two of oblivion on his own bed followed by a shower, some fresh clothes, and a return to the ICU. Given the urgency of Patty’s warning yesterday, he wondered if he was still in some sort of danger, or if the events at Camp Sunshine had altered things.

For a time, images of Charles Newcomber’s grotesque corpse dominated his thoughts. Was his death in some way related to his history of pedophilia or his homosexuality? Could it possibly have been connected with Grace Davis’s films? In view of the two alphabet letters skewered on Newcomber’s pen set, no explanation made sense other than that his name had popped up on the screen of the managed-care killers. But knowing what he knew of their motives and methods, Will felt no comfort with that explanation, either.

The Wolf Hollow Condominiums looked as unruffled and serene as usual. There was a prim white guardhouse at the end of the entry drive, but shortly before Will moved into the complex, the condo association had voted down the expense of manning it or installing any of a number of possible electronic security systems. Cautiously, Will drove past his unit, scanning for anything the least bit out of the ordinary. Finally, determined not to spend another night on the Law Doctor’s couch, he parked in his space and entered the town house through the rear door. His personal security system was still on. He disarmed it with the twins’ birthday and crossed to his mail slot by the front door, his antennae still searching for trouble.

The note was on top of a small wad of bills and circulars-an undistinguished business envelope with Will Grant printed in pencil in an unsteady, somewhat juvenile hand. Will’s first impulse was to treat the envelope and its contents as evidence and to handle it with a tweezers before opening it with a knife, but he was hardly in the mood to be patient. With some care, he held the envelope by one corner, took it to the kitchen, slit it open with a steak knife, and extracted a piece of typing paper folded in thirds. The writing, also in pencil, was by whoever had addressed the envelope.

For a gift from Charls come alone to the corner of Dennis and Spruce in Roxbury. 8 tonite. Bring $500 cash.

Roxbury.

During his surgical training, Will had done several rotations through Boston City Hospital, which drew many patients from that section of the city. The population there was largely black and poor, and the area’s reputation was, simply put, that whites should avoid it after dark.

Bewildered, Will wrote down the address and carefully replaced the original sheet in its envelope. Charles Newcomber had been dead less than a day. Was this note from his killer? What did the foppish little radiologist have to do with Roxbury? Will had a street map of Boston in the car but had only driven through a few blocks of the community while taking the kids on excursions to the Franklin Park Zoo. He had absolutely no idea of the layout of the streets. Was he insane just to bop on in there at night? Should he notify Jack Court about the note? And perhaps the most perplexing question of all: Did he even have $500 in his bank account?