Harlan Coben - Hold Tight

LeCrue arched an eyebrow. “It turns me on when a suspect talks all manly like that. It turn you on, Scott?”

“My nipples,” Scott said with a nod. “They’re hardening as we speak.”

“Now before we get too gooey, I just have a few more questions and then we can end this. Do you have a patient named William Brannum?”

Again Mike wondered what to do and again sided for cooperation.

“Not that I can recall.”

“You don’t remember the name of every patient?”

“That name doesn’t ring any bells, but he might be seen by my practice partner or something.”

“That would be Ilene Goldfarb?”

They knew their stuff, Mike thought. “Yes, that’s correct.”

“We asked her. She doesn’t remember him.”

Mike didn’t blurt out the obvious, What, you talked to her?He tried to keep still. They had talked to Ilene already. What the hell was going on here?

The grin was back on LeCrue’s face. “Ready to take it to the next entrepreneurial level, Dr. Baye?”

“Sure.”

“Good. Let me show you something.”

He turned back to Duncan. Duncan handed him a manila folder. LeCrue put the unlit cigarette in his mouth, reached in with tobacco-stained fingernails. He plucked out a sheet of paper and slid it across the table toward Mike.

“Does this look familiar?”

Mike looked down at the sheet of paper. It was a photocopy of a prescription. On the top were printed out his name and Ilene’s. It had their address up at NewYork-Presbyterian and their license number. A prescription for OxyContin had been written out to William Brannum.

It had been signed by Dr. Michael Baye.

“Does it look familiar to you?”

Mike made himself stay silent.

“Because Dr. Goldfarb says it isn’t hers and she doesn’t know the patient.”

He slid another piece of paper. Another prescription. This time for Xanax. Also signed by Dr. Michael Baye. Then another.

“Any of these names ringing a bell?”

Mike did not speak.

“Oh, this one is interesting. You want to know why?”

Mike looked up at him.

“Because it is made out to Carson Bledsoe. Do you know who that is?”

Mike thought that maybe he did, but he still said, “Should I?”

“That’s the name of the kid with the broken nose you were jawing at when we picked you up.”

The next entrepreneurial step, Mike thought. Get your hooks into a doctor’s kid. Steal prescription pads and write them yourself.

“Now at best-I mean, if everything breaks your way and the gods are smiling in your direction-you will only lose your medical license and never practice again. That’s best-case scenario. You stop being an M.D.”

Now Mike knew to shut up.

“See, we’ve been working this case for a long time. We’ve been watching Club Jaguar. We know what’s going on. We could arrest a bunch of rich kids, but again if you don’t cut off the head, what’s the point? Last night we got tipped off about some big meeting. That’s the problem with this particular entrepreneurial step: You need mid- dlemen. Organized crime is making serious inroads into this market. They can make as much from OxyContin as cocaine, maybe more. So anyway, we’re watching. Then last night things started going wrong over there. You, the doctor of record, show up. You get assaulted. And then today you pop up again and wreak havoc. So our fear-the DEA’s and U.S. Attorney’s Office-is that the whole Club Jaguar enterprise will fold its tent and we’ll be left with nothing. So we need to crack down now.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“Sure you do.”

“I’m waiting for my attorney.”

“You don’t want to play it that way because we don’t think you wrote those. See, we also got some legitimate prescriptions you’ve written. We tried to match the handwriting. It isn’t yours. So that means you either gave your prescription pads to someone else-a big-time felony-or someone stole them from you.”

“I got nothing to say.”

“You can’t protect him, Doc. You all think you can. Parents try all the time. But not this way. Every doctor I know keeps pads at home. Just in case he needs to write a prescription from there. It is easy to steal drugs from the medicine cabinet. It is probably even easier to steal prescription pads.”

Mike stood. “I’m leaving now.”

“Like hell you are. Your son is one of those rich kids we talked about, but this graduates him to the big time. He can be charged with conspiracy and distribution of a schedule two narcotic for starters. That’s serious jail time-max of twenty years in federal prison. But we don’t want your son. We want Rosemary McDevitt. We can cut a deal.”

“I’m waiting for my lawyer,” Mike said.

“Perfect,” LeCrue said. “Because your charming attorney has just arrived.”

RAPED.

There wasn’t so much silence after Susan Loriman said that word as there was a rushing sound, a feeling like they were losing cabin pressure, as if the whole diner were descending too fast and their ears were taking the brunt of it.

Raped.

Ilene Goldfarb did not know what to say. She had certainly heard her share of bad news and delivered much of it herself, but this had been so unexpected. She finally settled on the all-purpose, quasi-stall platitude.

“I’m sorry.”

Susan Loriman’s eyes weren’t just closed but squeezed shut like a child. Her hands were still on the teacup, protecting it. Ilene considered reaching out but decided against it. The waitress started toward them, but Ilene shook her head. Susan still had her eyes shut.

“I never told Dante.”

A waiter walked by with a tray teetering with plates. Someone called out for water. A woman at the neighboring table tried eavesdropping, but Ilene shot her a glare that made her turn away.

“I never told anyone. When I got pregnant, I figured it was probably Dante’s. That’s what I hoped anyway. And then Lucas came out and I guess I knew. But I blocked it. I moved on. It was a long time ago.”

“You didn’t report the rape?”

She shook her head. “You can’t tell anyone. Please.”

“Okay.”

They sat there in silence.

“Susan?”

She looked up.

“I know it was a long time ago-” Ilene began.

“Eleven years,” Susan said.

“Right. But you might want to think about reporting it.”

“What?”

“If he’s caught, we can test him. He might even be in the system already. Rapists normally don’t stop at one.”

Susan shook her head. “We’re setting up this donor drive at the school.”

“Do you know what the odds of that getting us what we need are?”

“It has to work.”

“Susan, you need to go to the police.”

“Please let this go.”

And then a curious thought crossed Ilene’s mind. “Do you know your rapist?”

“What? No.”

“You should really think about what I’m saying.”

“He won’t be caught, okay? I have to go.” Susan slid out of the booth and stood over Ilene. “If I thought there was a chance to help my son, I would. But there’s not. Please, Dr. Goldfarb. Help with the donor drive. Help me find another way. Please, you know the truth now. You have to let this be.”

IN his classroom, Joe Lewiston cleaned the chalkboard with a sponge. Many things about being a teacher had changed over the years, including the replacement of green chalkboards with those new erasable white ones, but Joe had insisted on keeping this hold-over from the previous generations. There was something about the dust, the clack of the chalk when you wrote, and cleaning it with a sponge that somehow linked him to the past and reminded him of who he was and what he did.