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.