IF YOUR BELIEFS DON’T FIT WITH THE FACTS, THEN JUST POUND THE HELL OUT OF THE FACTS UNTIL THEY DO.
He snatched up the phone and dialed. Will Grant answered on the first ring.
“Okay, Doctor,” Micelli said, making a series of boxes around the words, “take me through that day again.”
CHAPTER 20
Embarrassed, angry, frustrated, humiliated, impotent. Patty couldn’t remember ever having felt more uncomfortable. For more than two months her life had been consumed by the need to find a killer and bring him-or her-down. Now, to all intents, her part in the case was over. She would be helping to keep the day-to-day operations of her unit moving along while Wayne Brasco would be working with Sean Digby, who had come on board well after she did, and a veteran detective named Brooks, who had transferred to Middlesex from Hampden just a month ago.
“Look at it this way,” Jack Court had tried to explain to her, “with me tied up with this case along with the others, you’re going to be like running this place. Brooks is too new to have that responsibility, and Digby is too green. The rest of them aren’t nearly as competent as you are.”
Bullshit!
In some ways, it felt as if she was leaving the force altogether. She sat at her desk, grateful that the phone hadn’t rung and that no one had felt the need to stop in and talk to her. Set in neat piles on the floor around her were the tangible products of countless hours of work and thought about the managed-care killer-stacks of documents, computer printouts, interviews, newspaper clippings, photographs, and transcripts.
It wasn’t right, she was thinking as she identified each of the piles with a carefully printed sheet and bound them with heavy rubber bands. There was some sort of commission or ACLU lawyer someplace who would be more than happy to take up her banner and prove in court that she was being removed from her case without just cause. But then, even if she could find such a champion, her career on the force would be over. It was lose-lose for her all the way around. If she could just hang in and get past this disappointment and embarrassment, there would be other times for her to prove herself. In fact, although she wasn’t about to tell Court or Brasco, she wasn’t totally certain she was going to let go of this case yet.
Even thoughts of Will and the night just past weren’t enough to give her flagging spirits much of a boost. He was a bright, caring, terrific guy-totally genuine and very attractive. Making love with him was great while it was happening, but she knew, as she suspected he did, too, that both of them were stressed, vulnerable, and needy. The passion, spontaneity, and chemistry between them were real, and she had absolutely no regrets, but she suspected Will would agree that they would probably have been better off to have waited.
Stacked on top of one another, the piles of exhaustive work reached two feet or more. Reluctantly, Patty hauled them down to Court’s office. As far as she could tell, neither the lieutenant nor Brasco had looked at much of what she had amassed to this point, and there wasn’t much chance they would now. The two men were sniggering about something, but stopped abruptly when she arrived and didn’t bother to explain what it was.
“All right, Pat,” Court said with fake cheer, “let’s get this over and get you onto a couple of new cases.”
“I thought maybe we could take a few minutes and I could explain how all this is organized,” she said. “I have these areas cross-referenced. Here’s the key I put together for that.”
She passed over three sheets, single spaced-the product of hours of work. Brasco favored her with a disinterested grin and set the sheets down on the stack, where they would likely remain for eternity. Court, perhaps sensing an impending escalation in tension, cleared his throat.
“So, Pat,” he said, “is there anything else you feel we should know before we get on with business?”
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact there is.”
“Okay, then, go on.”
Could Court have possibly been more patronizing? Brasco clearly had one use and one use only for women, but the lieutenant had a bright social worker wife and two daughters. Surely his disregard for her couldn’t just be that she was female.
“Thanks,” she said. “I just want you to know that something feels off to me about this whole thing. I keep sensing that the real object of this guy’s anger isn’t the managed-care executives, it’s us-I mean the police.”
Brasco raised his hands in bewilderment.
“Sergeant, maybe it’s because I don’t have a master’s degree like you do, but that theory of yours just went right over my head. What’s to question? This whack-job’s mother croaks because of something a managed-care company does to her-maybe a premature hospital discharge, maybe refusal to have her evaluated in an emergency ward. They do such things all the time, only this time the lady dies and her kid just happens to be a professional killer-or else he becomes a damn good one in a big hurry. He sets out to right the wrong of her death, while at the same time humiliating the HMOs and terrifying their executives.”
“An arrogant, egomaniac son of a bitch,” Court added. “Just like all the others who go around killing to make a point.”
“I know that’s what the profiler is telling us,” Patty said, “and that may be the whole deal, but-”
“But what?” Brasco demanded, his voice up an octave or so.
“It just seems too neat, that’s all. Why would he just tell us it’s about his mother the way that he did?”
“Because that’s what it’s all about!” Brasco exclaimed. “He’s insane over losing her. Now we even know her name.” Brasco was mindless of the glare from Court.
Patty felt as if she had been slapped.
“What are you talking about?”
“The letters,” Brasco replied, now clearly into his braggadocio too deeply to back out. “After that neurosurgeon bought it, I went over all the letters with the cryptographer. It only took us a couple of hours. The M and N were the key. According to him there’s a ninety percent chance the killer’s spelling Remember Clementine.”
“The mother’s name is Clementine?”
“That’s right. So now all we have to do is scan the databases of all the hospitals and also the medical examiner’s office, looking for the death of a woman named Clementine. Meanwhile, we’re going to-”
“Wayne, listen,” Court cut in, “if you haven’t any further questions for Pat, perhaps it’s best to just let her get on with her work.”
Patty had already caught on that Brasco was supposed to shut up about whatever it was they were planning to do. It took somewhat longer for him to come to that conclusion.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, sure,” he said. “Listen, thanks for all the paperwork, doll. We’ll keep you posted.”
Patty willed herself not to burst into tears and also not to leap on Brasco and claw off his face. At the moment, there wasn’t a damn thing she could do except to find a safe, quiet place to lick her wounds. If Brasco caught the killer, good for him. But she decided for certain at that moment, one way or another, he was going to have competition.
“You got it,” she said.
Head high, she made a military about-face and left Court’s office, taking pains to close the door softly behind her.
“Wayne, what in the hell were you thinking,” Court said as soon as it was clear Patty wasn’t going to return. “I thought we decided she was out. If she’s out, then just let her go. I agree with you that trapping the killer through that drug-addicted doctor is the way to go. But sharing anything with her can only mess things up. She’s screwing the guy, for chrissakes.”