“All right,” Court said when the team had settled back in his office, “thoughts?”
“I still think Grant’s dirty in this,” Brasco said. “I think he’s playing us like a violin. His big screwup was overdosing on that drug. Now it’s damage control for him-using someone from that damn Society of his to make it seem like he isn’t involved in these killings.”
“Patty?”
“I think the call strongly suggests Grant is innocent, but at the moment that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the call also implies someone is going to get killed tonight.”
“So?”
Patty withdrew a manila file folder from her briefcase and opened it.
“Well, believe it or not, there are ninety-seven managed-care or health-insurance companies of one kind or another headquartered in Massachusetts alone-HMOs, PPOs, MCOs-alphabet soup. Most of them are within thirty miles of Boston. There are another twelve in New Hampshire and a few more in Vermont and Maine. If we limit ourselves to this state and eliminate the three companies where someone’s already been killed-and I’m not at all sure we should do that-we have ninety-four companies to contact and warn. I have a list of them here with phone numbers and a contact person, usually the membership or PR coordinator.”
There was silence while the group waited for a reaction from Court. Patty sensed that the last thing he wanted to do was to find any merit in her suggestion, but she also knew contacting the CEOs of the companies was the thing to do.
Finally, Court inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly.
“Okay, we have enough people here to make these calls over the next hour or two. Might as well include the companies that have already had someone murdered. What do we tell them-just for all their executives to be careful?”
“Don’t go walking around alone,” Patty said. “Bring a guard along when they walk to their car. Keep their personal cars out in the open, not in their garage where someone can work an explosive into place without being seen.”
“Is it worth notifying the TV and radio stations?”
“I don’t know. The killer must suspect that Will Grant’s phone is tapped, otherwise he wouldn’t take the sort of precautions he has. But if we go public, we remove any doubt. I hate to put the guy in harm’s way.”
“I say go with it,” Brasco blustered. “Grant’s a damn drug addict. Almost killed his patient. The execs who have been murdered were all upstanding citizens. They all were big into charitable causes.”
“So is Will Grant,” Patty snapped. “He started the Open Hearth soup kitchen in Fredrickston when he was a medical student, and he still volunteers there.”
“That doesn’t change anything, and neither does your grandstanding here. You just conveniently neglected to mention that list you’re holding is one I told you to put together.”
“You know, Brasco, I’ve just about had it with you, you sexist-”
“Enough!” Jack Court slammed his fist on his desk. “Moriarity, divide up those phone numbers. I’m warning you, you and Wayne better find a way to work together on this thing, or one of you is going to go. And I’m warning you about something else, too. Keep your personal life separate from your work.”
Forcing Court’s warning to the back of her mind, Patty made the twenty or so calls she had been assigned. The effort to alert all of the managed-care CEOs in the state seemed akin to trying to stop an elephant with a pop gun, but at least they would have done what they could do. The best they could hope for was that the killer’s dramatic proclamation about the piper being on the loose and needing to be paid was his way of keeping the police off balance-one of the I’m Smarter Than You Are ego games that ultimately led to the capture or death of so many like him.
Now there was nothing more to do but sit down and analyze the tape that had been made of the killer’s call. Not surprisingly, Brasco had again managed to maneuver her out of the loop by suggesting that he and Court meet with the new profiler to pore over the recording. Patty was assigned to contact the cryptographer and, even though there were no new alphabet clues, to go over the letters they did have in light of the new information on the tape. She had a different idea, but it wasn’t one she wanted to discuss with her CO.
She wasn’t surprised when she called Will to find him at home and anxious for company. He was openly relieved to hear that, in her mind at least, any lingering doubt about his not being connected to the killings was gone. What she didn’t share with him, but grudgingly acknowledged to herself, was that for days she had been looking for the opportunity to see him again.
It was almost seven by the time she pulled into a parking space marked GUEST, not far from Will’s condo. On the drive over, she listened to Yo-Yo Ma’s contemplative score from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Spurred on by the horrible events of Will’s week, she found herself trying to rank some of the worst things that had ever happened to her. Certainly, her mother’s illness and death headed the list, and there were some tragedies over the years that had befallen her friends. But most of the rest, dating back to middle school, it seemed, centered about bad choices she had made in men, including last year’s follies with Jerry Parkhurst, a wildly attractive and successful mergers-and-acquisitions attorney, who lived in a stunning waterfront apartment in Charlestown.
Parkhurst seemed like a potential keeper-a match for a lifetime-until after they had finally slept together following their fourth or fifth date, when he almost casually mentioned that in addition to his penthouse bachelor pad, he also had a sixteen-room mansion in Newton, where he lived “unhappily” with his wife and two children. That was a bad one, and would have been even more painful if she had actually fallen in love with him. But with images of the vivid imprint of her hand on the side of his face, and some tincture of time, the sleaze had become a relatively distant memory. In terms of pain, it was certainly nothing compared to what Will was going through now.
With Jerry Parkhurst strutting through her brain like Harold Hill in The Music Man, Patty rang Will’s bell.
“Be right down,” Will called from the window above.
Dressed in rumpled chinos, a light-blue button-down, white socks, and slightly worn Nikes, he looked every bit like a man who had lost his medical license, was facing criminal drug and manslaughter charges, and was being harassed by a serial killer.
“You okay?” she asked.
Will made no attempt to mask his discouragement.
“I can handle everything that’s happening to me,” he said, “but people aren’t being kind to my kids. That I can’t handle. Forgive me for saying it, but I really want to kill some of them.”
“I don’t think I’d do very well at dealing with that, either.”
Patty accepted the offer of a Diet Coke, set her tape recorder on the coffee table, and motioned that it was okay for Will to sit on the couch where they both could have access to the control buttons. The distance between them was the same as when he was on the recliner, but she knew there was something more to the sensation of having him sitting there. In her head, Jerry Parkhurst and Jack Court were engaged in some sort of heated discussion that she decided not to try to overhear.
“Let’s start by listening to the whole conversation with no interruptions,” she suggested. “Then we’ll play it again and again if necessary until we both feel we’ve squeezed every ounce of juice from it.”
It was the fifth time Patty had listened to the eerie exchange. While the gender of the caller was electronically obscured, the cadence and choice of words made her almost certain it was a man.
“Do you think he’s going to kill someone tonight?” Will asked as she clicked off the tape and rewound it for another pass.
“I’m hoping, praying, he’s just jerking our chain,” she replied. “Toying with us.”
“He doesn’t seem like the toying type to me.”
“Why do you say that?”