Michael Palmer - The Society

“It’s bad for me, too. I can’t get an antibiotic that I need because it’s not on the HMO-approved formulary, but the ones that are in there either don’t work or make me so sick they don’t stay in my body. So, if I do what’s best for me and get the medication that works, the payment is more than fifty dollars. Well, I don’t have to tell you that to a family of four with one income, that is a hard chunk.

“We already pay sky-high rates, and they keep rising while our copays keep rising as well. The bottom line is I feel I might as well be uninsured. The doctor doesn’t make me feel confident and the circle is never-ending. The patient is the butt of the whole thing. I truly believe that America is helpless. I am so nervous every time I get sick. This probably seems totally trivial to you, but believe me, most of the patients in this country feel the same way I do. Thanks for reading this.”

Will walked back around the podium and replaced the microphone. “And on behalf of myself, Dr. Lemm, and the Hippocrates Society, thank you all for caring enough to attend tonight.”

The huskiness in his voice was as surprising as it was unintentional.

Several silent seconds passed. Then the applause began, building like the sound of a river churning downstream toward a falls. Then, with Gordo leading the way, slamming his huge hands together, most of the crowd rose, cheering out loud. Thoroughly drained, Will nodded sheepishly and returned to his seat. Still the clamor continued. Roselyn Morton took the microphone and thanked the audience and participants, but it was doubtful anyone heard through the noise. The forum was over. Will sat for a time until he felt reasonably confident his legs would hold him, then descended the steps to the main floor, where he was mobbed. Gordo, Jim, and their wives hugged him. Susan squeezed him tightly and whispered something about his making the whole profession proud. Several members of the Society pumped his hand and said no one had ever done so much for their cause so quickly.

As the crowd began to disperse, Will’s attention was drawn to a woman standing off to the side, wearing tight-fitting jeans cinched with a heavy-buckled belt, a tan silk blouse, and a black vest. Her face was fascinating-vibrant and intelligent-with scattered freckles across the bridge of her nose and wide, emerald eyes that seemed possessed of their own light. For a time, she just stood there, eyeing him curiously until the last of the well-wishers had departed. Then, her gaze still fixed on him, she approached and handed him a business card.

“Please give me a call,” she said, punctuating the request with the tiniest wink.

Before he could speak a word, she turned and was gone. Her jeans highlighted an athletic, totally appealing behind. She moved with confidence and perhaps even a bit of swagger. Will watched until she had disappeared down the stairs. The vacuum she created in front of him was immediately filled by a few lingering fans, each anxious to tell him how his spontaneity and emotional sincerity had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. When at last he was alone, the woman’s face still dominating his thoughts, he took a look at her card.

Patricia Moriarity

Detective Sergeant

Massachusetts State Police

Patty woke from a troubled sleep at ten after three. Her dream this time-what she remembered of it-featured multiple burned and bloodied body parts interspersed with varying images of Dr. Willard Grant. The two homicides she had handled before the managed-care murders were exercises in police and crime-scene procedure, not in detective work. In the first, the victim had taken out a restraining order against her violent boyfriend, and half an hour after she had returned from court he kicked in her door and stabbed her twenty-five times. The second, a lover’s quarrel between two gay men, had ended in a single impetuous gunshot to the heart.

The shooting death of Ben Morales, CEO of Premier Care, was the first murder she had been assigned where the suspect wasn’t ready-made. Now, that one case had grown to three, and no one doubted that a serial killer was at work. On paper, she was still part of the team from Middlesex working the case, but thanks to Wayne Brasco, she was justifiably feeling more and more like an outsider. Meetings were being held that did not include her and were called nothing more than impromptu discussions when she found out. Consultants were being called in without her knowing about them. The profiler she had originally lined up-a young, talented woman-had been replaced by a more experienced, though in her mind far less capable, man.

Tired of having her ideas demeaned and brushed off, Patty had decided on her own and on her own time to attend the Faneuil Hall debate. It just seemed to her like a charged setting where something might possibly happen. And something had, only not at all what she had expected. Wrapped in the darkness of her room, she sat on the edge of her bed and wondered about Grant and why he was occupying so much of her thoughts.

There was no question he appealed to her. His looks were hardly classic Hollywood, but she had never been attracted to square jaws and dimpled chins. His face was narrow and angular, almost gaunt, but there was a gentle vulnerability to it that brought her images of the man curled up on a couch, glasses perched on the tip of his nose, reading by a winter fire. It was his eyes, though, that affected her the most-wide and dark brown, enveloped by shadows of strain and fatigue, yet still bright and intelligent. This was not a simple man, she decided after just a few minutes of watching him at the podium. This was a man who felt things deeply, who had honest humility, and who also, she suspected, had a past that included some significant pain.

Patty shuffled to the couch in her living room and sipped some decaf cinnamon tea before attempting to read herself back to sleep-first with an Agatha Christie she had read at least once before, then with some Emily Dickinson poetry. By four-thirty, her angry thoughts of Wayne Brasco and her pleasant ones of Willard Grant were scrambled with the frustration surrounding three violent deaths and nearly eight weeks of fruitless investigation. Sleep, at least for this night, was over. She tied a terry-cloth robe tightly about her waist, padded into the guest bedroom, which doubled as her at-home study, and switched on her desk lamp, the base of which was a remarkable Northwest Eskimo carving of a polar bear. The lamp had been a gift from her brother, Tommy, in honor of her graduation from the police academy.

Willard Grant. She knew precious little of the man. It would be fun to learn more. She rotated some residual stiffness from her shoulders, then switched on her PC, called up her favorite search engine, and typed in the name. Surprisingly, a seventy-five-page list of Web sites that contained the name popped up, encompassing 717 separate items. Intrigued, Patty began to scroll down the pages. After just a few minutes she was ready to give up. There were a few sites involving a Reverend Willard Grant in historical documents dating back before the Revolutionary War, but all of the rest, it seemed, pertained to a rock/jazz fusion band that took its name from the intersection where their first recording studio was located.

Grinning at the image of herself poring through countless Web listings at four in the morning, searching for a man to whom she had spoken all of five words, Patty highlighted page 33, which, for no particular reason, she considered her lucky number. The page was filled with more band sites, most of them in German.

Enough! she thought. He wasn’t wearing a ring, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t married. Go for a run. Do some push-ups. E-mail some friends. But stop this teenage-