“Maybe let’s just go for lunch somewhere,” Trevor suggested.
Julie gave Trevor’s hand an appreciative squeeze. “Sounds good to me, honey,” she said.
With everything that had happened, Julie was not about to leave Trevor home alone while she went on this jaunt. It did not take an M.D. to know Dr. Gerald Coffey had been intentionally avoiding her for days. She had called and e-mailed, all without reply. She even resorted to camping out in front of his office only to learn he was off for the week. A staycation, his assistant had called it. The same assistant also made a point of saying Dr. Coffey was available for patient consultation if needed. This meant he should have been available to answer Julie’s numerous calls.
What Julie wanted were answers, and those answers could not wait for Dr. Coffey’s return. Someone had intentionally deleted data from Sam’s file, and from the file of Tommy Grasso, and quite probably from Donald Colchester’s as well. Julie confirmed with Lynn Golden, Tommy Grasso’s respiratory therapist, that not long before Tommy died, he’d developed a bad case of hives. Stunned by the revelation, Julie double-checked Tommy’s EMR and found no entry of the reaction anywhere. Jordan double-checked and had confirmed a single deletion in the transaction log. They both saw reasonable cause to correlate the two. Someone had answers, and Julie hoped that someone was landing at Beverly Municipal Airport on time.
This rendezvous would not have taken place, at least not in this way, without Trevor’s help. Julie knew Dr. Coffey owned a plane. He’d made a point of bragging to her about his flying during that awful meeting. On a whim, she’d asked Trevor if it was possible to track down a pilot by their flight plan. Not that she expected Trevor to know, but she thought he might be able to figure it out. Trevor jumped on the assignment in a way he rarely did with homework, and in a matter of minutes came up with the answer.
“I just searched Gerald Coffey’s name in the FAA’s online registry and found a record of his plane,” he had said.
Julie had been in Trevor’s bedroom, staring over his shoulder in astonishment as he typed with dazzling speed. It seemed a new Web page loaded with each blink of his eyes. In the background Winston could be heard scampering about his cage, seeming as excited as Julie. The FAA page Trevor found showed an entry for a Diamond DA40 owned by Dr. Gerald Coffey.
Julie had Trevor do some additional research. “Made in Canada and Australia, the four-seat aircraft is considered a first choice for discerning pilots.” At $184,000, one would have to be very discerning. Trevor searched for flight plans on a Web site called FlightAware. There were none, though he soon discovered that flight plans were not required for private planes.
Julie’s disappointment was short-lived.
“When there’s cloud cover he would have to fly IFR, and that requires him by law to file a flight plan,” Trevor said, reading a Web page on the topic.
“You’re brilliant,” Julie said, ruffling his hair.
The forecast for the weekend was overcast, so in the morning Julie asked Trevor to do the search again. Bingo. Dr. Coffey planned a flight from Beverly to Providence, Rhode Island, and back to Beverly again. He would be landing at 11:30 in the morning.
Julie had contemplated surprising Dr. Coffey at his Marblehead home, but what she wanted was neutral territory. She worried that he would see her questions as threatening. If Dr. Coffey were involved in some kind of cover-up, a conspiracy of some sort, he might act erratically, might claim self-defense when the police arrived to find Julie’s lifeless body in the same gruesome state as Sherri Platt’s.
How hives and rare heart attacks in healthy hearts could be tied to Dr. Coffey and William Colchester, to Brandon Stahl’s murder conviction, and to the deaths of Tommy Grasso and Sam Talbot, Julie could not begin to fathom. Lucy’s findings were inconclusive. Becca, whom Lucy claimed possessed a steel-trap memory, recalled Sam’s pathology slide as showing an allergic reaction, but the actual slide showed nothing of the kind. Julie could not explain the discrepancy, just as Brandon Stahl could not explain how morphine ended up in his apartment.
Julie and Trevor arrived in plenty of time to find parking and to get settled in the small airport’s lounge. Through a bank of tall picture windows, Julie watched Dr. Coffey’s D40 descend from the overcast sky, appearing almost to the minute of when he was scheduled to land. Trevor’s expression was priceless. He had figured out where Dr. Coffey would be, and seeing his theory prove out made him beam with delight. Julie hugged her son to her body and kissed the top of his head.
“Good work, sweetheart,” she said. “Now when he shows up, I want you to wait over by the Coke machine. This has to be a private conversation.”
The lounge area was a spacious room with navigation maps on the wall, a few vending machines, some tables and chairs, and not much else. A few minutes after he landed, Dr. Coffey entered the lounge looking every bit the pilot. He had on a brown leather jacket and gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses, which he wore despite the cloud cover. Every one of his silver hairs looked perfectly placed. He walked with purposeful strides until he came to a hard stop the moment he realized the figure in the middle of the lounge was Julie. He exchanged his sunglasses for his other spectacles, the ones made of black plastic with thick lenses, the ones that magnified his surprised eyes.
“Dr. Devereux, what on earth are you doing here?”
“Dr. Coffey, what a funny surprise.”
Judging by Dr. Coffey’s glower, he found nothing funny about it.
“You know, I was thinking about you. Thinking there must be something wrong with my phone,” Julie said. “I called you a number of times and e-mailed as well, but never got a response. Lucky for me I bumped into you, in the airport of all places. Was that you who just landed? Beautiful plane.”
“It was. But again, what are you doing here?” Dr. Coffey’s voice had the edge of an ax.
Julie pointed to Trevor. “My son is an aspiring pilot. He likes to come and watch the planes land.”
“Really? I’ve never seen you here before,” Dr. Coffey said.
“We go to different airports,” Julie said without hesitating.
Dr. Coffey glanced at his expensive wristwatch.
“I’m afraid I’m in a rush, Julie,” he said. “It’s nice to see you. Best to your boy.”
Dr. Coffey walked past her, but Julie reached out and gently took hold of his arm.
The doctor whirled on his heels, his cheeks reddening while his nostrils flared like those of an angry bull.
“Oh, no worries, I’m in a hurry, too,” Julie said in a calm voice. “This won’t take but a minute.”
“Perhaps another time,” Dr. Coffey said.
“I just want to know if you had anything to do with my no longer having access to Donald Colchester’s medical record?”
Dr. Coffey’s lips were closed, his expression serious. “Why on earth would you ask me something like that?”
“I gave you my copy of Colchester’s file and the next thing I know, I don’t have access to the electronic version. I’m just curious. Do you know anything about that?”
“That-that-has nothing to do with me, I assure you.”
Julie took note of Dr. Coffey’s brief stutter. But she studied his body language a moment, and decided he was a better liar than poor Sherri Platt.
“I would like to have the file back, if I may,” Julie said.
Dr. Coffey shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. I shredded those documents after you left. There was no reason for me to keep them.”
“I guess you didn’t realize I wouldn’t be able to access them again.”
“To be honest, none of this is really my concern.”
Julie caught a nervous glance from Trevor. He could tell this conversation was tense, and conflict, especially in the wake of his parents’ divorce, was something he worked hard to avoid.