Sisterhood (32 page)

“Yeah, I read about that,” Ulansky said. “A doctor, right?”

“Right. A ton of circumstantial stuff against him, but way too neat, if you know what I mean. The captain, that pillar of justice, got pressure from some fat cat at the hospital and insisted that I bust the doctor. I did it, but I’ve never been convinced. Now the guy’s lawyer has been murdered. Ben Glass. You know him?” Ulansky grimaced and nodded. “Well, he was knifed. Outside the doc’s apartment door, no less. There are bullet holes all over, and the apartment door’s smashed in. There’s blood in the hallway and even on the wall.

“A little while ago the doctor gets brought to the emergency ward at the hospital soaked and freezing and half crazy. Then, before he can get any treatment, he splits with another guy. By the time I hear about it and get to the hospital, there’s no record he was ever even there. For all I know he may be dead by now. I’ve got the usual lines out for him, but I’m at a stone wall with
the rest of the case. I feel like the whole fucked-up mess is partly my fault for letting the captain talk me into arresting him.”

“How can we help?”

“My only hope of breaking something open is a pharmacist named Quigg. Marcus Quigg. Owns a little drugstore in West Roxbury. He swears that this Dr. Shelton filled a big prescription for morphine the day this woman was OD’ed.”

Ulansky’s moon face crinkled as he worked the name through his memory. “We’ve got something on the man someplace,” he said. “I’m almost sure of it. What about a C two twenty-two?”

“Quigg’s got one. The doctor claims it was stolen from his office, that he never ordered any morphine.”

“Signature?”

“Only a maybe from the guys at ident. They tell me Shelton’s signature is a scrawl. Easy to duplicate.”

“So maybe it
is
his,” Ulansky said.

“Maybe.” Dockerty shrugged. “My hunches have been wrong before.”

“Sure, about as often as a solar eclipse.”

Dockerty accepted the compliment with a tired grin. “I need a handle on that pharmacist, Ted,” he said. “The man bends, but he won’t break. I figure if he’d take a payoff to do something like this, he must have dirtied his hands on something else at one time or another.”

“Well,” Ulansky offered, “we can go through the files and check the computer for you. I have a feeling something’s down on paper about him.” He paused, then continued in a softer voice. “Dock, you know that if we can’t find anything on him we can easily set something up that will work just as well. Maybe better. You want that?”

Dockerty tensed, then rose and walked slowly to the far side of the room. Ulansky moved to add something,
then sat back and let the silence continue. Dockerty rested one arm on a filing cabinet. For more than a minute he studied the blank wall. “You know, Ted,” he said finally, “in all these years on the force I’ve never once purposely set anyone up. If I did it this time, I know it would be to make up for mistakes I’ve already made.” He shook his head and turned back to Ulansky. “I don’t want to do it, Ted. No matter what my fuck-ups may have put that doctor through, I don’t want to do it.” Ulansky nodded his understanding. “Look,” Dockerty added, “check everything you can to dig something up on Quigg. Call me first thing tomorrow. If I’ve got nothing and you’ve got nothing, we’ll talk.”

“Don’t worry, Dock,” Ulansky said stonily. “If Marcus Quigg has so much as pissed on a public toilet seat, I’ll find out. Don’t worry your ass about that at all.”

“That was it, that was the exit. I told you one twenty-seven and you just breezed right past it.” David, bundled in an army blanket, sat wedged against the passenger door. He glared at Christine, but turned away before she noticed.

“Sorry,” she said flatly. “My mind was on other things.” She took the next turnoff and doubled back. Traffic was light, but her difficulty concentrating was such that she kept their speed below fifty. For a time they drove in silence, each aware that the tension between them was building.

Finally Christine could stand no more. She pulled into the dirt parking lot of a boarded-up diner and swung around to face him. “Look, maybe this wasn’t a good idea—maybe we should go back.”

David stared out the window, struggling to comprehend the existence and the incredible scope of The Sisterhood of Life. Christine had given him only the roughest sketch of the movement, along with the promise of more details in the morning. Still, what she had
told him already was awesome. Several thousand nurses! Dorothy Dalrymple one of them! He had listened, his eyes shut, his head close to exploding, as her factual, curiously dispassionate voice divulged secrets that could easily decimate the hospital system to which he had dedicated so much of his life.

Now he felt sick. Tired and angry and sick.

Christine sensed his mood, but could not contain her own growing frustration. “Dammit, David,” she said, “I’ve been trying to explain to you as best as possible what has happened. I didn’t expect a reward, but I didn’t expect the silent treatment either.”

“And just what did you expect?” Irritation sparked in his voice.

“Understanding?” she said softly.

“My God. She kills one of my patients, gets me thrown in jail for it, causes my friend to be murdered almost in my arms, and wants me to understand. And … and that Sisterhood of yours. Why of all the presumptuous, insane …”

“David, I told you about The Sisterhood of Life because I thought you deserved to know. Back there at my house you seemed willing to listen and at least try to understand. Instead all you’ve done is pull into a shell and come out every few miles to snap at me. I’ll tell you one last time. I did not cause you to be arrested. I didn’t even know it had happened until I read it in the papers. I imagine The Sisterhood is responsible, and that sickens me. I joined the movement because of its dedication to mercy. Now I discover it’s involved in despicable crimes—against you, against Ben, and God knows whom else. If I had known ahead of time, I would never have allowed any of this to happen. Why else do you think I went to Ben to confess?”

She paused for a response, but David was staring out the window. “I thought you might be able to help me work things out,” she continued, “but that was foolish
of me. You have every right to be angry. Every right to hate me. I’m going home.”

She turned and started the engine. David reached across and shut it off. “Wait, please. I … I’m sorry.” His speech was halting and thick. “I’ve been listening to my own bitterness and anger and trying to understand where they’re coming from. I thought it was my pain talking, or frustration, or even fear, but I’m starting to know better. I liked you—maybe more than I would allow myself to accept. That’s what’s doing it. I didn’t want to believe you were any part of this. Now you tell me that you
were
part of it, but you ask me to believe you didn’t know what your Sisterhood was capable of doing. Well, I want to believe that. I do. It’s just that …” He gave up fumbling for words. How much of what she had told him had actually sunk in? “Look,” he said finally, “I’m absolutely exhausted. I can’t seem to hold on to anything. Please. Let’s call a truce for the night and just get up to Rosetti’s place. We’ll see what things are like tomorrow. Okay?”

Christine sighed, then nodded. “Okay, truce.” Hesitantly, she extended her hand toward him. He clasped it—first in one, then both of his. The warmth in her touch only added to his confusion. Why did it have to be her? Why? The question floated through his thoughts like a mantra, over and over again, easing his eyes closed and smothering the turmoil within him. He heard the engine engage and felt the Mustang swing onto the roadway in the instant before he surrendered to exhaustion.

“David? … I’m sorry, but you have to wake up.” Christine pulled the blanket away from his face and waited as he pawed his eyes open. “Are you feeling better?”

“Only if there are degrees of deceased,” he mumbled. He pushed the blanket to his lap and peered
through the windshield. They were parked on the shoulder of a narrow pitch-black road. “Where are we?”

“We’re in lost,” she said matter-of-factly.

Her humor, unexpected, nearly slipped past him. He glared at her for a moment, then stammered. “But … but we weren’t going there. I think we should take the next right, or at least the next left.”

“At least …” They both laughed.

“What time is it?”

“Two. A little after. We were right where the map said we were supposed to be, then all of a sudden, about fifteen or twenty minutes ago, the landmarks disappeared.” She handed him Joey’s drawing.

David opened his window and breathed deeply. The air, scrubbed by four days of rain, was cool and sweet with the scents of autumn. An almost invisible mist hung low over the roadway. Within a few breaths he could taste the salt captured in its droplets. Then he heard the sea, like the thrum of an endless train, up through the woods to their right. “Have we passed Gloucester?” he asked.

“Yes, just before I got lost. ”

He smiled. “You did fine, Christine. The ocean’s over there through the trees. It sounds as if we’re pretty high above it. I’ll bet a Devil Dog we’re near this place Joey marked as ‘cliffs.’ ”

“Bet a what?”

“A Devil Dog. You see I … never mind. I’ll explain tomorrow. Assuming I’m not too foggy to figure out what this map says, and if there are no other roads between us and the ocean, we should be close to the turnoff for Rocky Point. I vote straight ahead.”

She eased the Mustang back onto the road and into the darkness.

After a quarter of a.mile, the pavement rose sharply to the right. Moments later, they broke free of the woods. The sight below was breathtaking. The steep
slope, dotted with trees and boulders, dropped several hundred feet before giving way to the jet black Atlantic. Overhead, a large gap had developed in the clouds, exposing several stars and the white scimitar of a waxing moon. Christine pulled to the side and cut the engine.

“Even if we had no idea where we were, we wouldn’t be lost,” David said gently. “See that dark mass on the other side of the cove? I think that’s Rocky Point.”

Christine did not respond. She stepped from the car and walked to the edge of the drop-off. For several minutes she stood there, an ebony statue against the blue black of the sky. When she returned, tears glistened in her eyes. The rest of their drive was made in silence.

The little hideaway, as Joey had called it, was splendid—a hexagonal glass and redwood lodge suspended over the very tip of the point.

“David, it’s just beautiful,” she said.

“You go ahead and open the place up,” David said. “I’ll be along.”

“Do you need help?”

David shook his head, then realized he was not at all sure he could make it on his own. He pushed himself out of the car and onto the crutches. Immediately the dizziness and nausea took hold. He struggled to the bottom of the short flight of steps leading to the front door. For hours tension and nervous energy had helped him overcome the pain and the aftereffects of his hypothermia. Now, it seemed, he had nothing left. He grabbed the railing, but spun off it and fell heavily. In seconds Christine was beside him, supporting him, guiding him inside.

The huge picture windows and high beamed ceilings were little more than hazy, whirling shapes as she helped him past a large fieldstone fireplace to the bedroom.
As she lowered him onto the bed, the telephone in the living room began ringing.

“Go on and answer it, I’ll be all right,” he said, eyes closed. “It’s probably Joey.”

He heard her leave, and for several minutes he battled encroaching darkness and waited. By the time she returned, he was losing.

“David, are you awake?” A single nod. “You were right, that was Joey. He wanted to make sure we got here in one piece. Please nod if you understand what I’m saying, okay? Good. He called some friends of his on the police force. David, no one knows anything about Leonard Vincent being picked up tonight. Everyone in Boston is looking for you, but Vincent must have escaped the hospital before he was noticed. Joey said he would keep checking around and call us later today or else Saturday morning. We’re okay as long as we’re up here, but he said to be careful if we drive back to the city. David?”

This time he did not acknowledge.

Hours later, David’s eyes blinked open in misty wakefulness.

He was undressed and under the covers, his torn, swollen ankle propped up on pillows. Nestled beside it was a plastic bag of water—the remains of an improvised ice pack.

He lifted himself to one elbow and looked out through the ceiling-to-floor windows. An endless sea of stars now glittered across the clearing night sky.

A cry came from outside the room. David grabbed his crutches and limped toward the sound. Christine was asleep on the living room couch. She cried out again, more softly this time. David moved to rouse her. Then he stopped. He could wake her for a minute or ten or even an hour, but it would make no difference. He knew the resilience of nightmares.

T
he sizzle and aroma of frying bacon nudged David from a dreamless sleep and kept his first thoughts of the morning away from the horror of the past night.

Sunlight, isolated from the ocean breeze by the wall-sized windows, bathed him in an almost uncomfortable warmth. Sun! David opened his eyes and squinted into the glare. For nearly a week the world had been a damp, monotonous gray. Now he could almost taste the blue-white sky.

His forearm was throbbing beneath Terry’s bulky dressing, but not unbearably so. He dangled his legs over the edge of the bed and flexed his ankle. A numb ache, also tolerable. In fact, he realized, there was a strange, reassuring comfort about the pain—perhaps an affirmation that in order to hurt, in order to feel, he must still be alive. The notion brought with it a fleeting smile. How many times had he encountered patients who seemed to be actually enjoying their pain? Next time he would be more understanding.

He heard Christine moving about the kitchen, then suddenly there was music from a radio. Classical music! Telemann? Absolutely, he decided. A jumbo pizza and six
mindless hours of uninterrupted T.V. said it was Telemann. For a time he listened, thinking about the woman and the fantastic story she had told him. Last night he had been furious. As angry and frustrated as he could ever remember. But now, in the sunlight and the music, he realized she was in many ways as innocent, as caught in the nightmare, as he was. True, she had given the morphine to Charlotte Thomas, but in no way could she have anticipated the events to follow. He had to believe that. For his own sanity he had to believe that.