Sisterhood (31 page)

It was that third ring that woke Christine. She was stretched across her bed, careening through one grisly dream after another. On the floor, shards of torn note-paper were strewn about two pill bottles. Both of them were full.

“Wait a minute, I’m coming,” she called out. Could both her roommates have forgotten their keys? Knowing them, a likely possibility. She pushed herself off the bed, then stared at the floor. The shredded note, the bottles of gray-and-orange death—how close she had come. She threw the pills into a drawer, then swept up the scraps with her hands and dropped them in the basket. By the end of the terrible dark hour that had followed her return home, Christine had resolved that nothing ever would make her take her own life. Nothing, except perhaps a situation such as Charlotte Thomas’s. She would face whatever she had to face.

Again the doorbell sounded. This time it was the buzzer from the back door. “I’m coming, I’m coming.” She rushed through the kitchen and was halfway down the short back staircase when she stopped dead. It was him, David, propped on crutches and peering through the window. She reached down and flipped on the outside light; then she gasped. His face was drawn and cadaverous, his eyes totally lost in wide, dark hollows. A second man, his back turned, was standing behind him. Christine’s pulse quickened as first confusion, then mounting apprehension gripped her.

“Christine, it’s me, David Shelton.” His voice sounded weak and distant.

“Yes … yes, I know. What do you want?” She felt frightened, unable to move.

“Please, Christine, I must talk to you. Something has happened. Something terrible …”

Joey grabbed his arm. “Are you crazy?” he whispered, working his way in front of the window. “Miss Beall,” he said calmly, “my name is Joseph Rosetti. I’m a close
friend of the Doc’s. He’s been hurt.” He paused, gauging Christine’s expression to see if any further explanation was necessary before she let them in.

Christine hesitated, then descended the final two stairs and undid the double lock. “I … I’m sorry,” she said as they entered the hallway. “You took me by surprise and … Please, come up to the living room. Can you make it all right? Are you badly hurt?”

For the next fifteen minutes she did not say another word as the two men recounted the events of the night. With each detail a new emotion flashed in her eyes.

Surprise, astonishment, terror, pain, emptiness. David studied them as they appeared. He wondered if she were even capable of a successful lie. Whatever she might have done, he was now certain that in no way was she responsible for Ben’s murder.

Still, she was somehow involved. That reality pulled David’s attention from her face. “Christine, what did you tell Ben?” She seemed unable to speak. “Please, tell me what you said to him.” There was a note of urgency and anger in his voice.

“I … I told him that it was me. That I was the one who … who gave the morphine to Charlotte.”

David’s heart pounded. His arrest, the filth and degradation of his night in jail, the unraveling of everything he had regained in his career, Ben Glass’s death—
she was responsible
. “And the forged prescription?” There was bitterness in his words now. “Were you responsible for that, too?”

“No! … I mean, I don’t know.” The muscles in her face tensed. Her lips quivered. The only explanation she could think to give him was the truth; but what was the truth? The Sisterhood had sacrificed David to protect her, she felt certain of that. But why Ben? It was hard enough to accept that they would choose to send an innocent man to prison, but murder? “Oh, my God,”
she stammered. “I’m so confused. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t understand.”

“What?” David demanded. “What don’t you understand?” His eyes flashed at her from their craters.

Christine began to cry. “I don’t understand,” she sobbed. “So much is happening and nothing makes sense. It’s horrible. The pain I’ve caused you. And Ben—they’ve killed Ben. Why? Why? I … I need time. Time to sort this all out. It’s crazy. Why would they do it?”

“Who’re
they
?” David asked. Christine didn’t answer. “Dammit,” he screamed, “what are you talking about? Who’re they?”

“Now just hold it a minute.” Joey put up a hand to each of them. “You’re both gonna have to calm down or we could all find ourselves in trouble. Leonard Vincent’s probably out of the picture, but there’s no guarantee he was working alone. The longer you two spend goin’ at one another like this, the more chance there is that some goon’s gonna crash in here and do it good to all three of us.” He paused, allowing the thought to sink in, and watched until he sensed an easing in the tension. “Okay. Now, Miss Beall, I don’t know you, but I do know the doc here, and I know the shit he’s been through. The way I see it, you’re both in hot water until this whole business is straightened out. I can see that the news we’ve brought has shaken you, but this man here deserves an explanation.”

“I … I don’t know what to say.” She spoke the words softly, as much to herself as to them.

Joey could see that she was coming apart. He glanced at David, whose expression suggested that he sensed the same thing. “Look,” Joey said finally, “maybe what we should do is just call the cops and—”

“No!” Christine blurted. “Please no. Not yet. There’s so much I don’t understand. A lot of innocent people could be hurt if I do the wrong thing.” She stopped and
breathed deeply. When she continued, there was a new calm in her voice. “Please, you must believe me. I had nothing to do with Ben’s death. I liked him very much. He was going to help me.”

David leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. “Okay.” He looked up slowly. “No police … yet. What do you want?”

“Some time,” she said. “Just a little time to work this whole thing through. I’ll tell you everything I know. I promise.”

David sensed himself soften before the sadness in her eyes and turned away.

“Look, Doc,” Rosetti said impatiently, “I meant what I said before. We’re just not smart stayin’ here any longer than we have to. If it’s no police, then it’s no police. If it’s some time to talk, then it’s some time to talk. Only not here.”

David heard the urgency in Rosetti’s voice and saw, for the first time, a flash of fear in his eyes. “Okay, we’ll get out,” he said. “But where? Where can we go? Certainly not my apartment. How about the tavern … or your place? Do you think Terry would be upset if we went there?”

“I have a better idea. Terry and me have this little hideaway up on the North Shore. I think if you two can keep from rippin’ each other apart without me for a referee it would be a perfect place. Doc, you can’t see yourself, but let me tell you, you look about ready for an embalmer. Why don’t you go on up there tonight and get some sleep. Tomorrow you can take all the time you need to talk things out.” David started to protest, but Rosetti stopped him. “This ain’t the time for arguin’, pal. You’re my friend. Terry’s friend too. So I know you’ll understand that I don’t want her mixed up in anything this messy. It’s the North Shore or you’re both on your own. Now what do you say?”

David looked over at Christine. She was slumped in
her chair, staring at the floor. There was an innocence about her—a defenselessness—that was difficult to reconcile with his pain and the hell she had caused him to live through. Who are you? he thought. Exactly what is it you’ve done? And why?

“I … I guess if it’s okay with Christine, it’s okay with me,” he said finally.

Christine tightened her lips and nodded.

“It’s decided, then,” Joey announced. “There’s food in the house. This time of year, there’s not too many folks on Rocky Point, so you shouldn’t be bothered. I’ll draw you a map. Take Christine’s car. We’ll follow you to the highway just in case. It’s nice up there. Especially if the rain is through for good. There’s an old clunker jeep in the garage. The keys are in the toolbox by the back wall. Use it if you want. Okay?”

“Give me a minute to pack a couple of things,” Christine said. “And to leave a note for my roommates that I won’t be home tonight.”

“Okay, but not too long,” Joey replied. “And, Christine? Tell your friends to keep the door locked—just in case.”

“Mr. Vincent, you have bungled things badly. Possibly beyond repair. Hyacinth took a great risk helping you escape that mess in the hospital, but never again. This time I want results. The girl first, then Dr. Shelton. Understand?”

“Yeah, yeah, I understand.” Leonard Vincent slammed the receiver down, then rubbed at the thin mat of dried blood that had formed over the stitches in his head. That twit Hyacinth wasn’t his type, but for being cool in a crunch he had to hand it to her. After regaining consciousness, he had been unable to keep his feet. He remembered her helping him to a stretcher. Seconds later, a doctor arrived. It was then that the woman really put on her show, explaining how this poor orderly
had slipped and smacked his head on the floor, and how she would take care of all the paperwork if the guy would just throw some stitches into the gash.

Yes, sir, Vincent thought, he certainly did have to hand it to ol’ Hyacinth. Then he remembered the way she had looked at him just before she sent him out of the hospital—the hatred in her eyes. “You asshole,” she had said. “You absolute asshole.”

The memory triggered a flush of nausea and another siege of dry heaves—his third since leaving the hospital. Vincent held on to a tree until his retching subsided. “People are gonna die,” he spat, fighting the frustration and the pain with the only weapon he knew. “People are gonna fuckin’ die.”

Carefully, he eased himself behind the wheel of his car and drove to Brookline, He turned onto Belknap Street just as another car, heading away from him, neared the corner at the far end. Vincent tensed as he peered through the darkness, trying to focus on the car before it disappeared around the corner. It was red—bright red. The killer relaxed and settled back into the seat. He stopped across from Christine’s house and scanned the driveway. The blue Mustang was gone.

Muttering an obscenity, he reached inside the glove compartment and pulled out the envelope Hyacinth had given him. “Well, Dahlia, whoever the fuck you are,” he said, “I guess you get the doctor first whether you want it that way or not.”

He tore open the envelope and spread David’s emergency sheet on the passenger seat. Across the space marked “Physician’s Report” the words
ELOPED WITHOUT TREATMENT
were printed in red. The information boxes at the top were all neatly typed in. With an unsteady hand, Vincent drew a circle around the line of type identifying next of kin.

T
he wharf was dark, quiet, and even more eerie than usual. John Dockerty backed inside a doorway and listened until the echo of his footsteps had been absorbed by the heavy night. It took several minutes to sort out the random sounds that surrounded him. Clinking mooring chains. Gulls caterwauling over a midnight feast. The lap of harbor swells against thick pilings. The reassuring drone of a foghorn.

Gradually the tension in his neck relaxed. He was alone on the pier.

Through the silver-black mist he scanned along the row of warehouses, ghostly sentinels guarding the inner harbor. Then he crossed the narrow strip of pavement and ducked into a small alley. At the far end a slit of dim light glowed from beneath an unmarked warehouse door. Dockerty knocked softly and waited.

“Come in, Dock, it’s open.” Ted Ulansky’s voice boomed in the silence.

Dockerty slipped inside, closing the heavy metal door quickly behind him. “Christ, Ted,” he said. “I spend twenty fucking minutes sneaking around to be sure I’m
not followed, and you bellow at me louder than the foghorn out there.”

“Just goes to show what confidence I have in you, Dock. Come on over and park your duff.” Ulansky pumped Dockerty’s hand, then motioned him to a high-backed oak chair beside his desk. He was an expansive man with a physique that bore only a faint resemblance to the All-American linebacker he had been at Boston College two and a half decades before.

“Nice place,” Dockerty said sarcastically, looking around the large, poorly lit office. “Is this it?”

“This is it,” answered Ulansky with mock pride. “The fabled Massachusetts Drug Investigation Force headquarters. Want a tour?”

“No, thanks. I think I can manage to take it all in from here.”

In fact, the MDIF, while not publicized, had gained an almost fabled reputation for quiet efficiency and airtight arrests. Ulansky, as head of the unit, was gradually acquiring a superhuman reputation of his own. The office, however, was hardly the stuff of which legends are made. It was stark and cold. Bare cement walls were lined with filing cabinets—more than two dozen of them—all olive-green standard government issue. Inside the metal drawers, Dockerty knew, was virtually every piece of information available on illegal drug traffic in the state.

In one corner of the room, partially covered by Ulansky’s carelessly thrown suit coat, was a computer terminal connected through Washington with drug-investigation and -enforcement agencies throughout the country.

Ulansky lowered himself into his desk chair. “A drink? Some coffee?” Dockerty shook his head. “Must be serious business for you to come out here in this rat’s-ass weather, then refuse a drink.”

“I guess,” Dockerty said distractedly, reopening his
battle with some obstinate strands of hair. “I appreciate your coming out.”

Ulansky buried a shot glass of Old Grand-Dad in a single gulp. “Believe me, with the Czernewicz fight on live from the coast tonight, you’re about the only one of the precinct boys who could have gotten me out of the house. Jackie Czernewicz, the Pummeling Pole. You follow the fights?”

Dockerty shook his head again. “Too much like a day at the office for me.”

Ulansky smiled. “Tell me, then,” he said, “what prompts a visit from you to this Hyatt Regency of law enforcement?”

“I’m involved in a really weird case, Ted.” Dockerty scratched the tip of his nose. “An old lady got murdered while she was a patient at Boston Doctors Hospital. Morphine. So far I’ve narrowed the field of suspects down to about three dozen. Even made one arrest.”