Michael Palmer - The Society

He reached across and set his hand on top of Patty’s. Her skin was cool and dry. The monitor overhead showed a regular heartbeat, but just the same he slid his fingertips around her wrist and assured himself that her pulse was strong.

“Any change, Doctor?”

The man’s voice, from just inside the doorway, startled ten or fifteen minutes off Will’s life. He pulled his hand back and spun around. Although he had never seen the man before, he knew it was Tommy Moriarity. Moriarity’s arms were at his sides, his posture ramrod straight. Even through the gloom, Will could see Patty’s eyes and mouth in his, as well as the shape of her face. The policeman was dressed in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt and carried a thin book in one hand.

“She’s stable,” Will said.

“Good.”

“I guess you know who I am.”

“I guess you know who I am, too.”

The two men shook hands awkwardly, and Moriarity crossed to the other side of the bed.

“Does she need that tube?” he asked.

“Dr. Ng, her surgeon, just left. If her condition hasn’t deteriorated after a few more hours, he’s going to have it pulled. She’s tripping the machine on her own right now, and the tube could damage her trachea if it stays in.”

“She got hurt saving a fellow officer’s life.”

“I heard that, but I don’t know who.”

“Wayne Brasco-the man who took over for her.”

Inwardly, Will groaned.

“And he’s okay?” he asked.

“Barely a scratch.”

Shit.

“Do you know what happened?”

“Nobody seems to know. There was some sort of sting operation Brasco set up to catch the managed-care killer. Patty showed up uninvited and tried telling people they were on the wrong track and were being set up. Finally, she knocked Brasco away just as a shot was fired. She took a bullet along the side of her head, then hit a rock when she and Brasco fell.”

“The bullet didn’t do more than stun her,” Will said. “The rock is what did the damage.”

“But she’s going to wake up, right?”

Will looked across Patty’s inert form at her father. For all his gruffness and military bearing, he looked frail and frightened. Still, Will carefully avoided any knee-jerk reassurances.

“Given the sort of injury she had and the location of the bleeding, she could wake up any time. But head injuries are very unpredictable. Until she wakes up, we have every reason to be worried.”

“Thanks for being straight with me,” Moriarity said, rubbing briefly at his eyes. He held up the thin, tattered volume he had carried in. “This is one of her favorite books from when she was growing up; it’s poetry by Emily Dickinson. I thought maybe I’d try reading to her from it.”

“That’s a wonderful idea. When someone is unconscious, we never really know what senses are still working.”

“I wanted her to be a professor, or even a lawyer.”

“She’s a good cop,” Will said.

“I know.”

Well, why in the hell didn’t you ever tell her that? Will wanted to shout out. He stood to go.

“You’re a hero to her,” he said.

“So are you, from what I can tell,” Moriarity replied.

“For what it’s worth, she knows I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“She told me that. At the moment I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt there. But do yourself a big favor, Doc, and don’t ever do anything to hurt her.”

Again, Will held back any reflex reaction. Fathers protect daughters. It was as simple as that-at least it should be.

“You have my number,” he said. “If you have any medical questions, or any questions at all for that matter, please call-just remember that your guys have my phone tapped.”

Will battled back the urge to stop by Sid Silverman’s office to see if there had been any news from the lab. Instead, he walked the block to the Jeep through a raw, gray early afternoon and headed home. The piecemeal sleep he had gotten on Micelli’s pullout, plus the tension generated by the events of the day, were taking their toll. All he could think of was an hour or two of oblivion on his own bed followed by a shower, some fresh clothes, and a return to the ICU. Given the urgency of Patty’s warning yesterday, he wondered if he was still in some sort of danger, or if the events at Camp Sunshine had altered things.

For a time, images of Charles Newcomber’s grotesque corpse dominated his thoughts. Was his death in some way related to his history of pedophilia or his homosexuality? Could it possibly have been connected with Grace Davis’s films? In view of the two alphabet letters skewered on Newcomber’s pen set, no explanation made sense other than that his name had popped up on the screen of the managed-care killers. But knowing what he knew of their motives and methods, Will felt no comfort with that explanation, either.

The Wolf Hollow Condominiums looked as unruffled and serene as usual. There was a prim white guardhouse at the end of the entry drive, but shortly before Will moved into the complex, the condo association had voted down the expense of manning it or installing any of a number of possible electronic security systems. Cautiously, Will drove past his unit, scanning for anything the least bit out of the ordinary. Finally, determined not to spend another night on the Law Doctor’s couch, he parked in his space and entered the town house through the rear door. His personal security system was still on. He disarmed it with the twins’ birthday and crossed to his mail slot by the front door, his antennae still searching for trouble.

The note was on top of a small wad of bills and circulars-an undistinguished business envelope with Will Grant printed in pencil in an unsteady, somewhat juvenile hand. Will’s first impulse was to treat the envelope and its contents as evidence and to handle it with a tweezers before opening it with a knife, but he was hardly in the mood to be patient. With some care, he held the envelope by one corner, took it to the kitchen, slit it open with a steak knife, and extracted a piece of typing paper folded in thirds. The writing, also in pencil, was by whoever had addressed the envelope.

For a gift from Charls come alone to the corner of Dennis and Spruce in Roxbury. 8 tonite. Bring $500 cash.

Roxbury.

During his surgical training, Will had done several rotations through Boston City Hospital, which drew many patients from that section of the city. The population there was largely black and poor, and the area’s reputation was, simply put, that whites should avoid it after dark.

Bewildered, Will wrote down the address and carefully replaced the original sheet in its envelope. Charles Newcomber had been dead less than a day. Was this note from his killer? What did the foppish little radiologist have to do with Roxbury? Will had a street map of Boston in the car but had only driven through a few blocks of the community while taking the kids on excursions to the Franklin Park Zoo. He had absolutely no idea of the layout of the streets. Was he insane just to bop on in there at night? Should he notify Jack Court about the note? And perhaps the most perplexing question of all: Did he even have $500 in his bank account?

“What’d you say?”

The elderly black man, dapperly dressed in a sports coat, dress shirt, vest, tie, and plaid walking cap, had been ambling past a row of shops that were all secured with metal accordion gates. Now, in no apparent rush to get anyplace despite the inclement weather, he hunched down by the open window of the Jeep beneath his small black umbrella and squinted in at Will. It was already twenty minutes after eight. Dusk had come and gone, yielding to another in what seemed an unending string of raw, drizzly nights. The tangled, narrow streets of Roxbury, many dating to Colonial times, had completely overwhelmed Will’s tattered street guide-or at least his ability to read it.