Patty scanned the documents, which were impressive. She knew that in the case of restraining orders, the police and courts invariably sided with the wife until matters could be sorted out. Generally speaking, the policy was as it should be, but there were still times when husbands were penalized unjustly.
“There were other issues, as well,” she said, sensing some thawing of her feelings toward the man, as well as some guilt that it was she who had failed to dig deeper before passing over the information about him to Brasco. “An arrest in college for assaulting a police officer.”
“We were protesting the firing of a black faculty member,” Will said wearily. “The man I shoved was campus police. He wouldn’t stop prodding us with his nightstick. He pushed me, I pushed back. He got his feet tangled up and fell. There were like a hundred witnesses. Eventually, when the truth came out, he was put on probation.” He produced another file from his desk, this one considerably thicker than the other, labeled Medical License Renewals. “I put this stuff together because, when we apply for a medical license or renewal, the form asks about arrests.”
In addition to documentation of the incident outside the dean’s office, there was extensive material dealing with a fight in medical school that resulted in Will’s arrest and subsequent exoneration.
“The guy was psychotic,” Will explained. “He was also tougher than I was, and he beat the snot out of me. Six months later he got expelled for cheating and repeated acts of violence.”
“You seem to bring out the worst in people.”
“I guess you might say that, but thankfully, there are those who would disagree with you.”
“One more thing,” Patty said. “The lab.”
Will rolled his eyes in frustration.
“Brasco almost took my head off over that, but it was like the moment he saw my name and the word murder together in some computer search, he stopped looking.”
Patty used the tip of her tongue to moisten her lips, which had become unpleasantly dry.
“Go on,” she said.
“I was a social activist all the way through school. Heck, I would be more of one now, too, if I had the chance. In med school we formed an organization for protest, mostly against the pharmaceutical industry for giving medical equipment to impoverished students with their company logo on it. We named our group after a comic book-the Justice League-but we never really did much because we were just too busy trying to survive med school. Shortly after the lab explosion, some unnamed source told a reporter that it was us.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“No,” he said, “it wasn’t. The newspaper chose to shoot first and ask questions later, just like your Lieutenant Brasco.”
It wasn’t Brasco, it was me.
“Did they ever find out who did it?”
“A Ph.D. who had been booted out of the lab because of doctoring some research results and costing them a big grant. It was in the papers. I don’t have the article, but I’ll bet it wouldn’t be hard to find.”
“I’ll bet it wouldn’t,” Patty said glumly.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I mumble sometimes. So, do I get to keep all this to show Lieutenant Brasco?”
“I’ll make copies and send them to you. I have your card.”
“Make the copies and just hang on to them,” Patty said. “If, as you say, the killer really has adopted you to be his public voice, we’ll be seeing each other again very soon.”
“I’d like that very much,” Will said.
For the first time, there was a glint of mischief in his eyes.
For the first time, Patty didn’t avert hers.
CHAPTER 11
If you didn’t do anything, then you don’t have anything to worry about.
Will wondered how many times he had heard that maxim from his parents, or how many times he had used it on his own kids.
If you didn’t do anything, you don’t have anything to worry about.
Well, he hadn’t done anything other than pick up the receiver, so why was he feeling so worried? The answer to that question was, of course, that three wealthy, powerful corporate executives had been murdered, and the police were under intense pressure to arrest someone. Motive, opportunity, method. Delightful Lieutenant Brasco had latched on to him like a mastiff on a bone, hitting over and over on the fact that Will scored high on two of the three suspect requirements. And as for the third, the mastiff was quick to point out, anyone could pull a trigger, and almost anyone could go online for a few hours and learn how to blow someone up.
“Why don’t you just save us all some time and hassle and tell us you did it so we can reassure the public and get you some much-needed help?”
“Why would I go out of my way to plant those alphabet cards in my desk?”
“Don’t make me answer that, Dr. Grant.”
At the end of the morning, after Will had shared his documentation with Patty Moriarity, it seemed to him as if she might be a small port in the gathering storm. But even if she did believe he was being used by the killer, it was doubtful she had much clout. Brasco didn’t seem to care much about how she felt one way or the other.
To no one’s surprise, Will was on call again both for the group and as backup for the ER. The evening was pleasantly hectic. A code 99 at eleven had the emergency physician backed up, so Will waded in, suturing both the winner and loser of a tavern brawl, evaluating a woman with belly pain, and even stabilizing a child with a febrile seizure until the pediatrician arrived. The busy pace helped keep his mind from drifting too much to the chilly electronic voice and the notion of what it must take to cold-bloodedly kill a person, let alone three.
Patty had told him the significance of the two letters in the envelope and had disclosed the other six after extracting the promise that he would share the information with no one. At various breaks in the evening, he tried playing around with the eight letters, but nothing leapt out at him that made any sense.
At two o’clock, suddenly drained, he made his way up to the surgical on-call room and dropped face-first onto the bed. When the jangling phone shattered a bizarre, X-rated dream featuring a scantily clad, green-eyed brunette with a shoulder holster, he had been deeply asleep for three uninterrupted hours. Remarkable. The switchboard operator apologetically reminded him that he had asked for a five-fifteen wake-up call. Just before he tarnished his reputation by calling her insane, he remembered his eight-o’clock case.
If it was possible to call anyone with cancer of the pancreas lucky, Kurt Goshtigian qualified. In general, by the time pancreatic cancer caused any symptoms, it was too late for anything except condolences and maybe some palliative chemotherapy. But Goshtigian’s tumor had been diagnosed by accident on a CT scan done after a beam swung loose on the construction site where he was working and struck him in the lower chest. There was nothing more than a deep bruise from the impact of the beam, but an incidental finding, still well-contained in the portion of the pancreas referred to as the head, was a cancer. Now, a week later, Will was about to cure that cancer through the surgical approach known as a Whipple procedure.
He showered, dressed in a fresh set of scrubs, and paid his customary early-morning visit to the ER lounge for coffee, OJ, and a doughnut with the soon-departing night-shift crew. He was surprised to find Gordo there, powdered sugar still flecked in his beard like Christmas snow. He was regaling the nurses with one of his trademark jokes-the one dealing with lan MacGregor, seated at his usual spot at the bar, deeply and morosely in his cups and, of course, speaking in the heaviest of brogues.