Berger smiled ruefully. “How do you think? Leonard was in on it.”
No one spoke. Finally, Oliver said, “Leonard was in on it?”
“Yes.”
“For how much?”
“Not an even cut, but a sizable portion. Shockley arranged it all. At that point, I was already drowning in deceit. I felt I had no choice but to agree.”
“Don’t tell me,” Oliver said. “Then Leonard got greedy.”
Berger hid his face for a moment. “It does sound like a sordid story, doesn’t it?”
“Keep going, Doctor,” Saugust prompted.
Berger said, “Kenny started whining. That he had the most to lose because he was actively doing all the illegal shenanigans. And this was true. He demanded a bigger cut and made threatening noises when we balked.”
Oliver said, “He tells on you, he screws himself up.”
“Actually, Detective, we pointed that out to him.”
“And?”
“And we never got any farther in our negotiations.” Berger wiped sweat from his brow. “Because a week later, Azor was murdered. Not knowing what was going on, I kept a low profile, stopped taking calls from either of them. Then yesterday…when I found out about Kenny and Reggie…”
He wiped sweat off his brow and bald head with a handkerchief.
“This should be self-evident. I became truly terrified.”
Oliver put down his notebook. “Was Shockley the only one you dealt with at Fisher/Tyne?”
“He’s the only one I know about.” Berger paused. “Though I have no way of proving this…I always felt that Shockley was moving with Grammer’s permission.”
“You have nothing to tie Grammer to your activities?”
“No.”
Oliver consulted a moment with Saugust.
“What?” Dorman said.
Saugust said, “Would your client be willing to wear a wire to try to get something out of Shockley?”
“That wasn’t part of the deal,” Dorman said. “And since he was already offered immunity for testifying, I don’t see where that would be in Dr. Berger’s best interest.”
Oliver said, “Might be in his best interest to obtain a new identity.”
Dorman said, “What are you implying?”
Oliver said, “Just that it’s going to be hard for him to practice medicine after all this comes out.”
“Why should it come out?” Berger’s voice was panicked. “I thought I cut a deal-”
“You’re associated with three dead men, sir,” Oliver replied. “It’s bound to come out.”
The room was quiet.
“Not that I can speak for the FBI,” Oliver said, “but they might be willing to fix him up with a new set of papers so he could practice medicine without harassment.”
Dorman said, “You don’t have the power to do that.”
Oliver said, “No, I don’t. But the FBI does. And you know, your client is still under investigation for murder. Especially now that he doesn’t have anyone who could verify his whereabouts-”
Berger interrupted. “I had nothing to do-”
“Myron, please.” Dorman took out a pen and clicked it several times. “I’ll take the matter up with the local agents here.”
“I told you all I know,” Berger whined. “I don’t want to wear a wire.”
“Myron, we’ll talk about this later.” To Oliver, Dorman said, “Anything else?”
Oliver said, “What was Sparks doing all this time?”
“Pardon?”
“He must have been disappointed in Curedon’s mediocre results. He must have looked over the data. Are you telling me he didn’t have any idea about what was going on?”
“Azor was disturbed by the results, yes. But he had confidence in Reggie. Actually, it was Reggie who was upset. He couldn’t understand why, after riding this tremendous upswing of wonderful results, his data suddenly crashed.”
Berger spoke softly.
“The team got our readouts from Fisher/Tyne. Because the company owned the drug. But I know that a couple of times, Reggie got hold of data directly from Fisher/Tyne’s labs, before it went into their computers-”
“Before Ken Leonard got a chance to doctor it.”
“Yes. I knew Reggie was moving in fast. It was just a matter of time…”
“Yet Dr. Sparks never became suspicious.”
“Dr. Sparks had other problems to contend with-namely getting hearts. We have a severe shortage of healthy hearts. It’s gotten so bad that we’ve been reduced to repairing hearts with minor defects and recycling them for our sickest transplant patients,” Berger muttered. “That’s what happens when the government gets involved.”
Oliver asked, “What are you talking about?”
“What?”
“The government being involved,” Oliver said. “Are they hoarding hearts or something?”
Berger smiled. The first smile of the entire session. “I was speaking off the top of my head. No, the government is not hoarding hearts. What the government has done is pass good legislation that has done its job. Unfortunately, it’s made our jobs as cardiac surgeons a little harder.”
No one spoke.
“The helmet law,” Berger said. “Since they’ve enacted the helmet law, we don’t get the fatal head-injury motorcycle crashes. Meaning we just don’t get hearts like we used to.”
28
“So now we know why Sparks was involved with the bikers and their Peoples Environment Freedom Act or whatever the heck it’s called.” Marge closed the door to Decker’s office. “Sparks wanted the law repealed so he could harvest hearts.”
Oliver sat in Decker’s desk chair, exhausted after four hours of extensive questioning. The minutiae of Berger’s activities the night of Sparks’s murder. Berger had taken them through his activities in the lab step by step, giving them a plausible time frame. In the end, they had no choice but to release him. Not enough evidence to hold him for murder.
“A doctor needs a hobby.” Oliver shook his head. “And here I thought vampires were all made up.”
“Sparks was collecting hearts, not eating them,” Marge said.
“Out of my chair, Scott.” Decker checked the clock. It was almost one A.M. Today was Friday and the evening would bring in the Sabbath, his family’s day of prayer, meditation, and rest. As far as Decker was concerned, time couldn’t pass quickly enough.
Oliver got up and parked himself in a folding chair. “When we arrested Berger, he’d blurted out the same thing to Dr. Fulton. That Sparks was obssessed with getting hearts, used to try to pick them out of dead accident victims.”
Decker remembered New Chris’s intensive-care nurse talking about Sparks and his police band radio. How the doctor had raced to accidents, ostensibly to help out the victims. Had he only been interested in seizing body parts?
“I don’t know if it’s illegal,” Decker said, “but preying on victims like that is major league creepy.” He sat down. “So now we can explain why Sparks became a weekend warrior. The main question is…is Myron Berger telling the truth?”
No one spoke.
Decker said, “Maybe after the Curedon meeting, after Decameron and Sparks parted ways in the doctors’ parking lot, Berger came up to Sparks and invited him to Tracadero’s. Then Berger jumped him in the back alley.”
“I don’t see Berger taking out Sparks by himself,” Marge said. “Too much damage, too much blood.”
Decker said, “He’s a surgeon. He’s used to slicing and dicing.”
“Maybe Berger was the lure,” Oliver said. “Once Sparks reached Tracadero’s, Shockley pulled the plug on him…on all of them. Either Shockley or his boss, this Grammer guy.”
“But if the killings have to do with Fisher/Tyne and Curedon,” Marge asked, “what were Bram’s porno magazines doing at Decameron’s murder scene?”
Oliver said, “Maybe Decameron and Bram were lovers. Shockley found them, then left them around to put the blame on Bram.”
“Then why didn’t Bram defend himself when I arrested him?” Decker said. “Why was he willing to take a murder rap?”