Tess Gerritsen - Harvest

Abby repositioned the microfiche, and photos of Hennessy and his wife appeared on the screen, his face pudgy and serious, hers seemingly snapped in mid-laugh. There was no photo of the baby. Perhaps the Globe thought all six-month-old babies looked alike anyway.

Abby changed micro-riches to a date three and a half years before the Hennessy deaths. She found the article she was looking for on the front page of the Metro section.

Body of Missing Physician Recovered from Inner Harbor.

A body found floating Tuesday in Boston Harbor was identified today as Dr. Lawrence Kunstler, a local thoracic surgeon. Dr. Kunstler's car was found abandoned last week in the southbound Tobin Bridge breakdown lane. Police are speculating that his death was a suicide. No witnesses, however, have come forward, and the investigation remains open…

Abby centred Kunstler's photograph on the microfilm screen. It was a blandly formal pose, complete with white coat and stethoscope, Dr. Kunstler gazing directly at the camera.

And now, directly at her.

Why did you do it? Why did you jump? she wondered. And she couldn't suppress the afterthought: Or did you?

The one advantage of being relieved of ward duties was that Abby could skip out for the whole afternoon, and no one at Bayside would notice, or even care. So when she walked out of the Boston Public Library, and into the bustle of Copley Square, she felt a sense of both emptiness and relief that she didn't have to return to the hospital. The afternoon, if she so desired, was hers.

She decided to drive to Elaine's house.

For the past few days, she'd been asking around for Elaine's new phone number. Neither Marflee Archer nor any of the other transplant team wives had even known that Elaine's number had been changed.

Now, with the images of Kunstler and Hennessy still painfully sharp in her mind, she headed west on Route 9, to Newton. Talking to Elaine was not something she looked forward to, but over the last few days, whenever she thought about Kunstler and Hennessy, she couldn't help thinking about Aaron as well. She remembered the day of his funeral, and how no one had even mentioned the two previous deaths. Any other group of people would have found it an unavoidable topic. Someone would normally have remarked, This makes number three. Or Why is Bayside so unlucky? Or Do you think there's a common factor here? But no one had said a thing. Not even Elaine, who must have known about Kunstler and Hennessy. Not even Mark.

If he kept this from me, what else hasn't he told me?

She pulled into Elaine's driveway and sat there for a moment, her head in her hands, trying to shake off her depression. But the pall remained. It's all falling apart for me, she thought. My job. And now I'm losing Mark. The worst part about it is, I don't have any idea why it's happening.

Ever since the night she'd brought up the subject of Kunstler and Hennessy, everything had changed between her and Mark. They lived in the same house and slept in the same bed, but their interactions had become purely automatic. Like the sex. In the dark, with her eyes closed, she could have been making love to anyone.

She looked up at the house. And thought: Maybe Elaine knows something.

She got out of the car and climbed the steps to the front door. There she noticed the newspapers, two of them, still rolled up and lying on the porch. They were a week old and already yellowed. Why hadn't Elaine picked them up?

She rang the doorbell.When no one answered, she tried knocking, then rang again. And again. She could hear the bell echoing inside the house, followed by silence. No footsteps, no voices. She looked down at the two newspapers and knew that something was wrong.

The front door was locked; she left the porch and circled around the side of the house, to the back garden. A stone path trailed off into curving beds of well-tended azaleas and hydrangeas. The lawn looked recently mown, the hedges clipped, but the flagstone patio seemed disconcertingly empty. Then she remembered the furniture, the umbrella table and chairs that she'd seen here the afternoon of the funeral. They were gone.

The kitchen door was locked, but just off the patio was a sliding glass door that hadn't been latched. Abby gave it a tug and it glided open. She called: "Elaine?" and stepped inside.

The room was vacant. Furniture, rugs — it was all gone, even the pictures. She stared in bewilderment at the blank walls, at the floor where the missing rug had left a darker rectangle on the sun-faded wood. She went into the living room, her footsteps echoing in the bare rooms. The house was swept clean, vacant except for a few advertisement postcards lying just inside the front door mail slot. She picked one up and saw it was addressed to Occupant.

She went into the kitchen. Even the refrigerator was empty, the surfaces wiped down and smelling of disinfectant. The wall telephone had no dial tone.

She walked outside and stood in the driveway, feeling completely disorientated. Only two weeks ago she had been inside this very house. She had sat on the living-room couch and eaten canap6s and eyed the Levi family photos over the fireplace. Now she wondered if she'd hallucinated the whole scene.

Still in a daze, she got in her car and backed out of the driveway. She drove on automatic pilot, scarcely paying attention to the road, her mind focused on Elaine's bizarre disappearance. Where would she go? To uproot her life so abruptly after Aaron's death didn't seem rational. Rather, it seemed like something one did out of panic.

Suddenly uneasy, she glanced in the rearview mirror. She'd made it a habit to check the mirror, ever since Saturday, when she'd first glimpsed the maroon van.

There was a dark greenVolvo driving behind her. Hadn't it been parked outside Elaine's house? She couldn't be sure. She hadn't really been paying attention.

The Volvo blinked its lights on and off. She accelerated. The Volvo did too.

She turned right, onto a major thoroughfare. Ahead stretched a suburban strip of gas stations and mini-malls. Witnesses. Lots of witnesses. Yet the Volvo was still right behind her, still blinking its lights.

She'd had enough of being pursued, enough of being frightened. To hell with this. If he wanted to harass her, she'd turn the tables and confront him.

She swerved into the parking lot of a shopping mall. He followed her. One glance outside told her there were plenty of people around, shoppers pushing carts, drivers searching for parking spots. Here was the place to do it.

She slammed on the brakes.

The Volvo screeched to a halt inches from her rear bumper.

She scrambled out of her car and ran back to the Volvo. Furiously she rapped at the driver's window. "Open up, damn you! Open up.t'

The driver rolled down his window and looked out at her. Then he removed his sunglasses. "Dr. DiMatteo?" said Bernard Katzka. "I thought it was you."

"Why have you been following me?"

"I saw you drive away from the house."

"No, before. Why did you follow me before?" 'when?"

"Saturday. The van."

He shook his head. "I don't know about any van."

She backed away. "Forget it. Just quit tailing me, OK?"

"I was trying to get you to pull over. Didn't you see me flash my lights?"

"I didn't know it was you."

"Mind telling me what you were doing at Dr. Levi's house?"

'! stopped by to see Elaine. I didn't know she'd moved."

'why don't you pull into that parking space? I'd like to talk to you. Or are you going to refuse to answer questions again?"

"That depends on what you're going to ask me."

"It's about Dr. Levi."

"That's all we're going to talk about? Just Aaron?"

He nodded.

She thought about it. And decided that questions could go both ways. That even the close-mouthed Detective Katzka might be induced to give out information.