Greg Iles - Third Degree

“I have a law degree.”

“Couldn’t pass organic chemistry, huh?”

Biegler’s laughter stopped. “I should also inform you that as of nine a.m. tomorrow, all Medicaid payments to the partnership of Auster-Shields Medical Services will cease. You are being excluded from the Medicaid program pending the outcome of your criminal trial. Have a nice day, Doctor.”

Auster slammed down the phone before Biegler could hang up. “Vida!” he yelled at his door. “Vida!”

Nothing.

He buzzed the front. “Nell, tell Vida to come back here!”

“Yes, Doctor.”

Auster put away the Diaka bottle and took three deep breaths to try to calm down. A moment later, Vida stepped into his office, her face lined with worry.

“Nell told me who it was,” she said. “You shouldn’t have taken that call, Kyle.”

“Yeah, well, you should have been here to tell me not to take it.”

“Let me guess. You got into a pissing contest.”

Auster shrugged helplessly. “Do you know what he said I’m facing?”

“Jail, I guess.”

Auster leaned forward and looked hard into Vida’s heavily made-up eyes. “Not just jail. A hundred and seventy-five years in prison.”

She didn’t flinch. “No way. Never happen.”

“Then there’s the little matter of sixty-five million dollars in penalties.”

At last her face lost some color. “Sixty-five million ? Can that be true?”

“Oh, yes. And that’s not counting punitive damages. You need to start researching the Kennedy-Kassebaum law. If you want to know what the rest of your life looks like, that is.”

Vida walked halfway around the desk and looked down at him. “Don’t let that asshole get to you. He’s just talking tough, like all cops do.”

“He’s pretty good at it.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve been sterilizing records for the past ten days. We never did anything stupid. I’ve been working in medical offices for eighteen years. Everything we billed for can be defended on medical grounds.”

“But the special patients…they can blow us out of the water. The stuff we did on them was based on total fiction.”

“Wrong. They said the words to you, Kyle. They made the complaints. You did what any conscientious physician would do, even if you thought the complaints might be psychosomatic.”

“Jesus, Vi.”

She reached out and brushed some hair from his eyes. “You’ve got to hold your nerve, baby.”

“We paid them to say that stuff!”

Vida shook her head. “Never happened. Untraceable cash, and long gone now, I promise you.”

“But if they testify-”

“They won’t. Where’s the upside for them? From us they get cash and free medical care. From the government they get jack shit. Anybody makes trouble, we’ll buy them off.”

“What if somebody has an attack of conscience?”

“They won’t. I didn’t pick a bunch of Holy Rollers to do this, I picked good, compromised Christians. The only thing we have to worry about is somebody you pissed off. Somebody testifying out of revenge. Like a woman, say.”

Auster’s mind flew back to a couple of attractive female patients, one of whom Biegler had called by name. In the natural course of things, they had offered him certain sexual favors in exchange for certain prescriptions, and he had not resisted as he should have. When their requests got out of hand, he’d had to cut them off, no matter what they offered. One or both of those women might present problems, particularly if the government had leverage over them based on drug-related charges.

“I see we’ve got a problem,” Vida said harshly. “Who is she?”

“Nobody. I was just going over it all in my mind.”

“Bullshit. Spill it, Kyle.”

Paul Biegler needed Vida working for him. She was relentless. Auster sighed heavily. “Quinesha Washington.”

Vida went pale. “That crackhead? You went with that skank?”

“Just a blow job-I never touched her otherwise.”

Vida shuddered in disgust. “Well, I hope it was a good one. She’s going to cost us plenty.”

A good one? More like a dozen good ones. “Sorry.”

“You go tell JaNel to draw blood for an HIV test.”

“Come on, Vi-”

“ Now, damn it! You don’t have the sense God gave a tomcat.”

Auster held up his hands in surrender. “I’ll do it when we’re done.”

“We’re done until you get that test back. I’m going back up front to try to save you from yourself.” She turned on her heel and stormed out.

Auster leaned back in his chair and waited for his heart to slow. A few blistering images of Quinesha Washington on her knees before him arced through his brain, but they vanished as Paul Biegler’s threats came rushing back. The funny thing was, the patients and the records weren’t what really worried Auster. What worried him was his partner.

Taking on Warren Shields had been a mistake. Auster had assumed that Shields, like all the young docs, was hungry for money. And Warren certainly had nothing against making money. But he was constantly checking himself against a code of ethics that belonged to an older generation of doctors-hell, the generation behind Auster, even. It was maddening. On the other hand, the affluent patients in town loved the guy, so he was still good for business.

Then, like a gift from heaven, Shields had suddenly come around on the money issue. About a year ago, he’d walked into Auster’s private office after work and said point-blank that he needed to make more money. Auster told him it was no problem, that the money had always been there for the taking, had Warren been ready to earn it. Warren had just nodded and said he was, and that was that. Auster didn’t know what had precipitated Warren’s sudden venality-a mistress, a drug habit, an expensive hobby-nor did he care. In short order he’d put Vida in charge of Shields on a day-to-day basis. Before Warren checked the billing code after seeing a patient, Vida would ask him a few questions, then check the appropriate box herself. A busy physician like Shields didn’t have time to be bothered with trying to figure out the finer shades of what constituted a Level 5 exam.

Within a month, Shields’s income almost doubled.

That abrupt uptick in billing might have been what attracted the attention of the Medicaid Fraud Unit. But Auster knew why he’d pushed it. Warren Shields’s reputation was spotless; he was the last doctor anyone would suspect of padding his charges. And Shields truly resented government intervention in medicine. Auster had no doubt that, confronted by an accusing government lawyer, Warren would experience a primal burst of outrage. If that pencil pusher Biegler went after Shields, he would get a blast of righteous anger that would set him back on his heels. Then Shields would use his considerable medical knowledge to defend every bill for every patient he’d ever examined. Auster would do the same. And if Vida could really keep the special patients quiet…then everything would be all right.

Laurel lay bound on the sofa, trying to keep her mind from going as numb as her extremities. She felt the minutes draining away like blood from a wound. All thoughts of marriage, adultery, and even pregnancy had fled. She lived only to discover the time. Only when she knew how long she had before the children got home could she plan her next move, which might be something she would have thought abhorrent an hour ago. Escape had been her first priority, but given Warren’s crazed emotional state, she could not limit her goal to breaking out of the house. The heavy glass vase he had urinated into-and then dropped during her race for the safe room-had come to rest against the wall that separated the great room from the kitchen. The handblown vessel, heavy and round at the bottom with a long, tapered neck, had the makings of an ideal club. A blow from that might crush Warren’s skull, but anything was preferable to letting her children walk into this nightmare.