Michael Palmer - Extreme Measures

"That woman was one hell of a nurse."

Joe Silver, his eyes about level with Eric's chin, stood hands on hips, glaring up at him.

She was a murderer, Eric wanted desperately to say. Are you one, too?

But he knew that until he held proof far more irrefutable than the notes that were folded in his hip pocket, any attempt at attacking Norma Cullinet would merely be adding Joe Silver's shovel to those already trying to bury him.

"I'm sorry she didn't make it," he managed.

"Yeah, you seem all broken up," Silver said. "You gonna tell me what you were doing in there, or do you want to wait until after the pathologists tell us why she died?"

"It happened just as I said it did," Eric responded, holding on to his rage by only the finest of threads. "I came up here to talk to Norma about some things and found her dead; and I did my best to resuscitate her.

I don't think I did anything to deserve the kind of treatment I just received from you in there."

Silver looked as if he were about to spit in Eric's face.

"Your indignation doesn't even deserve a response," he said acidly, "but let me lay it out for you.

First, you're involved in a series of very bizarre, disruptive events, all of which suggest that you are drugaddicted, crazy, or most likely both. Next, you are told by me to stay away from this hospital until this whole business is straightened out. Yet here you are, dressed up like a goddam professor, in the room of a woman whose door says NO VISITORS, and she's dead."

"You've got it wrong," Eric said simply.

Joe Silver glared at him.

"Damn, but you're an arrogant son of a bitch.

Now, you just listen up, Najarian. I don't want to see your face in this hospital again until the pathologist's report on this woman is in.

If her death is on the up and up, you'll get your chance to explain all the other madness you're into. -But if she was murdered, I plan to be at the head of the line of those who win want to see you hung up by your goddam crazy Armenian heels and stoned."

Without waiting for a reply, he whirled and stormed down the eighth-floor oriidor.

"Well fuck you — very much, Dr. Silver," Eric said courteously.

"I'll try to be worthy of your understanding and confidence."

Furious, he ran down eight flights of stairs to the basement, threw his lab coat in a corner, and then took the tunnel to one of the side exits.

A chilly mist was swirling down from the heavy late-morning sky.

And although it was twenty minutes by foot to Bernard Nelson's apartment, Eric had no inclination to do anything but walk. He crossed over Cambridge Street and wandered up Charles-the same route he and Laura had taken on their first night together. It was a night that seemed several lifetimes ago.

He had come so close, so damn close. Now, rather than putting an end to their nightmare, he had only intensified it. If, as seemed quite possible, Norma Cullinet's autopsy showed her death to be murder, his unauthorized presence in her room, coupled with the other suspicions surrounding his sanity and drug use, would quickly vault him to the head of any list of suspects. One step forward, two steps back.

Perhaps the Najarian could become a new dance craze.

He picked up a copy of the Herald, wondering what new absurdities they had chosen to print about "Zombi Doc." What he found instead was a front-page teaser and page 3 spread on the robbery/murder at the Gates of Heaven. According to the write-up, there were no signs of forced entry, leading police to suspect the murderer was known to the victim.

Investigators were currently focusing on names in an appointment book recovered from Donald Devine's desk. Nowhere in the article was there mention of the macabre treatment room in the mortuary basement. Did the police choose to withhold that find, or had the room been dismantled before they even arrived on the scene?

Those questions were troubling, but not nearly as much so as the possibility that among the names in Devine's appointment book would be one Dr. Eric Najarian.

One step forward, two steps back.

Eric folded the paper, slipped it into his jacket pocket, and leaned against the corner of a building, physically and emotionally spent.

Across the street, three stories above a chic Italian bistro, two workmen undaunted by the rain were washing windows from a suspended platform. Eric was musing on the possibility of his one day earning a living in such a manner when the door to the cafe opened and Anna Delacroix stepped out, arm in arm with a man.

She wore a rich knee-length leather coat, and her hair, unpinned, billowed to her shoulders. But there was not a whit of doubt in Eric's mind that it was Anna. NOr, he suddenly realized, was there any doubt as to her companion. He concealed himself behind the corner of the building and watched as Haven Darden walked the spectacular woman around to the driver's side of a smart gray Alfa convertible, embraced her fondly, and blew her a kiss as she drove off. Then the White Memorial chief of medicine straightened his tie, checked himself in the mirror of a store window, and strode off toward the hospital.

Eric moved to follow, but then quickly halted.

Haven Darden was not going anyplace where he couldn't be found.

At last, there was no need to make any move until he was absolutely ready, absolutely in control. So much made sense now-so many disconnected pieces had suddenly converged and meshed.

He had reached the center of Caduceus. Now, all that remained was finding a way to break Dr. Haven Darden down.

And this time, there would be no steps back.

To Laura Enders the drive to East Boston through the Callahan Tunnel seemed interminable. In point of fact, something-an accident or breakdown-had stopped traffic in one of the two tunnel lanes, locking her and Captain Lester Wheeler in a snarl that already spilled well back onto the expressway on the Boston side.

"Last time we went, Eric and I took this beautiful, very high bridge over to East Boston," she. said.

Wheeler, wearing jeans and a blue Irish-knit fisherman's sweater beneath his windbreaker, nodded.

"The Mystic River Bridge. We could have taken that, but I thought we'd go this way so we can come up behind that Bow Street lot, not on the side your man Rocky wants us to."

"Why?

"Just in case it's a trap. The first thing we teach our detectives is: where possible, never play anyone else's game."

"I understand. That man's voice sounded honest to me, though. I don't think we're headed for any trap, and I think Scott is somewhere just on the other side of this tunnel."

"I hope you're right," Wheeler said, inching toward the East Boston side of the harbor. They were in an unmarked police car, which had a blue light on the dash and a metal-mesh screen separating the front and back seats. "I'm sure you read in the papers where we found that funeral parlor owner, Donald Devine, in permanent repose in one of his caskets."

"Yes. Yes, I did read that. I'm not surprised. I told you the last time we spoke that he was into something shady."

"You did in fact. The question is what?"

Laura just shrugged. She and Bernard Nelson had decided to tell no one, not even the police, of her role in the hit-and-run death on son Avenue, or of their break-in at the Gates of Heaven-at least not until the nature of Devine's business dealings became clear, or someone was arrested for his murder. In addition, the policeman had already asked her pointedly about Eric and his well-publicized misadventures.

It seemed unwise to say anything just yet that might raise further questions of her reliability.

"Beats me," was all she said. "Listen, Captain Wheeler, in case I forget to say so later, I really appreciate your coming with me today. I don't think I would have felt completely comfortable taking a cab."