The Society (13 page)

“Dr. Grant?”

“Yes.”

“Marshall Gold here. Mr. Halliday is at an all-day conference. Is there anything I can do to help you?”

The time spent on hold had done nothing to help Will calm down. Barely pausing to breathe, he recounted the situation with Grace Davis and his disturbing conversation with Charles Newcomber.

“I am on the provider panel for both Steadfast Health and Excelsius,” he railed, “and so there is absolutely no reason to prevent me from caring for this woman—”

“Dr. Grant—”

“I promise you, if Boyd Halliday doesn’t intercede in this case and set matters straight, he’d better be watching the news and reading the papers, because I won’t hesitate to bring Grace Davis to them and—”

“Dr. Grant,” Gold repeated calmly.

“What?”

“We’re sorry for the confusion. We have no problem honoring Mrs. Davis’s request to switch to you for her surgeon.”

“You don’t?”

“No, sir.”

“But Newcomber—”

“The arrangement we have with Steadfast Health has, from time to time, generated some confusion. I’m sorry that you, of all physicians, on the day after the Faneuil Hall forum, of all days, have been caught up in it. Hopefully, in the very near future, Steadfast Health and Excelsius will be merging, and such misunderstandings will be eliminated altogether.”

The freight train of Will’s anger screeched to an immediate halt.

“You can speak for Halliday on this matter?”

“As I said, you are not the first physician to be caught up in this sort of situation. So long as you are a provider on our panel, which I most certainly know you are, you have been screened in depth by our credentialing committee and have been deemed to be a quality physician.”

“I . . . well . . . thank you, Mr. Gold. Thank you very much. Mrs. Davis will be very pleased to hear that.”

“Is there anything else?”

“No. No, I guess not.”

“Dr. Grant, I assure you, we are not the soulless, money-grubbing monsters you have worked so hard to portray us as.”

“Maybe you’re not,” Will replied distantly. He set the receiver down softly.

“So, I guess you’re my surgeon,” Grace said.

“I guess I am. I don’t know why I’m sitting here feeling like a jerk when I didn’t even do anything but stick up for our rights. The company made the offensive call, then the company took it away. It’s as simple as that.”

“It’s as simple as that, except that you have passion for your profession and your patients and don’t want to have that stolen away from you.” She stood and set copies of the morning’s
Globe
and
Herald
on his desk. “I’ll make an appointment for you to examine me and speak to me and my husband about what’s in store for us, and also to schedule the biopsy. With any luck, you’ll get to help save my life a second time. I’m not sure I subscribe to this one, but an ancient Chinese belief is that if you save someone’s life, you are responsible for that person and what she does with the rest of her life, having presumably cheated the fates out of an intended victim. If that’s really true, I would wager you have quite a number of souls on your plate.”

Before he could respond, she reached across the desk, briefly took his hand in hers, and was gone, leaving the faintest scent of something springlike swirling in the air.

Will checked the morning’s schedule once again. He still had ten precious minutes to review lab reports and dictations and to sign the stack of payment requisitions for those companies who refused to allow a rubber stamp, proxy, or any signature other than his in black ink. Two minutes into the ten, his private, direct line—the line reserved for family, close friends, and other physicians—began ringing.

“Dr. Grant?”

The voice was tinny—mechanical and robotic—the sort of distorted, disembodied, computer-generated voice that telemarketers were using more and more to announce that you had just been chosen to receive three free days and two free nights at one of Orlando’s newest resorts, or to ask you to call for the absolute lowest mortgage rates possible, even if you have been refused credit in the past. Only this call had come in on a number that none but the most dogged, resourceful telemarketing firm could ever have obtained. Will resisted the impulse simply to hang up.

“Who is this?” he asked.

“Is this Dr. Grant?” the totally creepy voice asked again.

“It is. Now, who is this? What do you want?”

“You did well last night, Dr. Grant. Very well.”

“Use your regular voice or I’m hanging up,” Will managed, though with less force than he had intended.

“All in good time. We are very proud of you, Doctor. Very proud. These companies have got to be made to pay for all those they have killed.”

Will sank back in his chair, stunned at the notion that this might be the one who had recently murdered three people. However, within just a second or two, his surgeon’s mentality kicked in and was demanding action. He snatched up a pen and wrote the caller’s words down as closely as he could remember.

“Are you responsible for the killings?” he asked, searching his thoughts for any other action he should be taking. Aside from staying focused and prolonging the conversation as long as possible, he could think of nothing. Along the margin of the paper, he wrote:

?Man?

?Woman?

Halting speech? . . . On purpose?

We . . . not I

We . . . not I

Several times . . .

“This is war,” the voice said. “In war people die. These corporations earn millions off the blood of the innocent. You implied as much last night. Now you are one of us. You are our brother in this war—a fellow soldier. If you need us, we will be there for you. If we need you, we expect your cooperation. Top drawer of your desk—back left corner. We are counting on you to deliver the message that we are engaged in a holy war to avenge the innocent.”

There was a click and, an instant later, a dial tone.

Will continued writing furiously until he was certain that most of the chilling diatribe was on paper. Finally, he scanned the transcript. His handwriting was deplorable under the best of circumstances and would have been the butt of office jokes had not Gordo Cameron’s been even worse. Carefully, he reprinted those words that were particularly illegible. Then, his palms unpleasantly damp, he pulled open the top drawer of his desk and peered down at the contents. In the back left, on top of the usual mélange of letters, articles, notepads, photographs, prescription pads, paper clips, writing implements, and scattered surgical instruments, was a plain white business-size envelope with the flap tucked in, not sealed. Inside were two pieces of white index cards, each three inches square. A
C
was printed on one with some kind of marker. An
N
was printed on the other. Aware that he had done the wrong thing by touching the envelope at all, Will carefully replaced the letters and set the envelope back where it was in his desk.

Then, with an unpleasant gnawing in his gut, he slid Patricia Moriarity’s business card to the center of his blotter and called.

CHAPTER
10

Six minutes after Will ended his conversation with Patricia Moriarity, two uniformed state policemen, sirens blaring, arrived at the Fredrickston Medical Arts Building and began the process of sealing it off. There were at least a dozen different practices of varying specialties in the building, in addition to a pharmacy, an optician, and a bagel store. Will knew that for at least the rest of the morning, there would be massive inconvenience for all of them.

Susan was doing a case in the hospital, and Jim Katz had the day off. But Gordo had arrived in his office while Will was speaking with Grace Davis. Now he was stuck there, and not at all pleased about it. Arms folded, his bulk threatening to overwhelm his desk chair, he stroked his beard and gaped over at Will in disbelief.

“Willy, now tell me again,” he said, “just what are ye doin’ consorting with a murderer?”

“Hey, you’ve got it backward, Gordo. It’s him . . . or her . . . or them . . . or it—I couldn’t even tell, for chrissakes—that’s consorting with
me
. Because of the things I said at the forum last night, the bastard has decided that I’m a kindred spirit of his—a brother in the war against managed care is how he put it. In fact, I had this feeling while I was listening to him that he might have actually been there last night.”

“That gives me the willies—or maybe out of deference to you I should say the creeps. How could they have gotten into this building and then into your office?”

“I was hoping you might be able to come up with a theory to explain that.”

“Well, given the crack security company that watches over this place, my guess is an entire terrorist cell could be operating here every night without being noticed.”

“You might be right. Think we ought to try and get in touch with Jim?”

“I can’t imagine something like this happening and him not wanting to know about it. In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s a wee bit of a control freak.”

“I’ll have Mimi try and find him.”

At that instant the receptionist called in over the intercom. “Dr. Cameron, would you tell Dr. Grant that Detective Moriarity is out here looking for him?”

“Consider it done, lass. Do us a favor and see if ye can locate Dr. Katz.”

Her expression businesslike, Patricia Moriarity shook Will’s hand, then motioned him over to the corner of the waiting room farthest from the receptionist. She was wearing a black hip-length leather jacket over dark slacks and a light blue sweater. Will couldn’t help but notice that the only ring she wore was on the third finger of her right hand.

“Dr. Grant, the crime-scene people will be here any moment to go over your office. Is there a place we can speak in private?”

“We have two empty physician’s offices. Either one would be fine.”

“You choose.”

Will led her to Susan’s consultation room, which was on the side of the suite directly opposite Gordo’s. The size and setup of the room were nearly identical to Will’s, but the modern art on the wall and extra touches Susan had added to the basic decor—curtains with a repeating Parisian street scene and a small reading table by the bookshelf—made it quite distinctively hers. Moriarity pulled one of the patients’ chairs away from the desk and motioned Will to the other. Then she flipped open a notepad and slid a government-issue pen from the wire.

“Dr. Grant,” she began, with no pleasantries or even a mention that they had met just twelve hours before, “what on earth were you thinking when you pulled that envelope out of your desk and opened it before calling me?”

Will took a few seconds to stabilize himself.

“I . . . I think I was so bewildered and frightened by the call that I wasn’t really thinking straight.”

“And there was nothing about the caller’s voice that you recognized?”

“It was totally mechanical. In fact, whoever it was might have been typing the words into a computer that then read them over the phone.”

“That technology is available.”

Even when she was writing, Patty kept her eyes on Grant. Despite what she had learned of the man—his temper, his history of violence, his suspected though apparently never documented association with an explosion that had killed a man—he had a vulnerability and sensitivity about him that seemed real. She reminded herself that if sociopaths had a major, it was gentleness and genuineness—just ask those who knew charming Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy, who dressed as a clown to entertain hospitalized children. As far as she was concerned, until proven otherwise, this man was a suspect in three violent murders.

Will forced himself to remain calm as Moriarity grilled him about his whereabouts at the time each of the three managed-care executives was killed. He expected the questions—even without a phone call like the one he had just received, others in the Hippocrates Society had been interviewed—but not the icy, disbelieving tone in which they were delivered. Even with the help of his calendar, the firmest alibi he could come up with was that on the nights of two of the murders—Morales and Rising—he was on call in the hospital. Of course, he was forced to admit, with his pager he could just as easily have been outside the hospital as in. If there was an emergency requiring his immediate presence, there might have been a problem, but in most situations he could have bought some time by giving instructions to the nurses and the resident on duty. The morning of Cyrill Davenport’s execution, he was at home, trying as usual when he wasn’t on call to catch up on lost sleep.

After writing down his responses, Moriarity again took him step by step through the minutes preceding, during, and following the eerie call. She was clinical if not cold, and even the most innocent attempt on his part to inject anything light or personal was immediately stonewalled. It did not take long before the fact that she had the sort of scrubbed, earthy good looks that most appealed to him was lost in the chill of her interrogation and in the realization that she did not believe his only connection to the murderer was through the phone call.

“Dr. Grant, tell me again why you think there is more than one killer?” she asked.

Will consulted his notes and read off each time the words
we
or
us
were spoken by the caller.

“You have no idea how the killer could have gotten your private, inside line?”

“None at all. It’s not like it’s the combination to Fort Knox, though. People do have the number.”

“And you have no idea how the killer or someone associated with the killer could have gotten into your office?”

“The maintenance people in this building probably make eight-fifty an hour. It wouldn’t take much to get one of them to put the envelope in my desk. Hell, with what I earn, it wouldn’t take much to bribe
me
into doing it.”

“There’s nothing funny about this, Dr. Grant.”

“And there’s nothing funny about you insinuating that I might have murdered three people,” he snapped back.