“No, take it, please—this copy is for you.”
Witner took it and dropped it on the coffee table.
“Humphrey, tomorrow is going to be an extremely big day here. Not only will we have our first televised medical procedure, but Brad Claxton, the gubernatorial candidate, is passing through the region and wants to give a press conference here.”
“So, he wants to tag on to Brenda Waters’ publicity,” said Atwood. “I’m rooting for the Republican candidate, Bob Simpson. How about you?”
“Humphrey, who gets elected has no more significance than who wins the Super Bowl. Individuals do not drive history. If there hadn’t been Napoleon, there would have been someone else. Just so long as the winner keeps us in mind, and that’s why we’re going out of our way to accommodate him. Now pay attention. Coast-to-Coast magazine has assigned a journalist to write a feature on the Medical Media program. She’s arriving tomorrow morning.”
“Great.”
“Whatever else Coast-to-Coast’s redeeming qualities may be, it has a large national circulation, and a glowing story will improve our name recognition. Therefore, we want a completely positive report. We do not want this journalist exposed to any of the naysayers around here, and there are a few left. I want to take no chances. To that end, Humphrey, you being one of the most optimistic people here, I’d like you to be her constant escort tomorrow. You stay glued to her elbow, do you understand?”
“Bryson, it’ll be an honor.”
“Honor or not, stay with her and keep her entertained and properly informed.”
A dreamy look came over Atwood’s face.
“Bryson, I just have to say this. All of us are amazed at what you’ve accomplished over the past few months. The Medical Media program alone would have taken a team of people half a year to organize, and yet you just set to work and—bang—it exists. You did it. Astonishing. You must have great connections.”
Witner narrowed his eyes, paused and studied Atwood’s face.
“What do you mean by connections?” he growled.
Atwood’s smile faded.
“It’s just an expression, Bryson.”
Witner leaned towards him, slowly.
“Do you have any reason to think that I might not work alone?”
A puzzled look came to Atwood’s face.
“I asked you a question. Answer me.”
“No, I don’t think that, Bryson. I was only—”
“I work alone. Do you comprehend that?”
Atwood cleared his throat and shifted on the chair.
“Yes, absolutely, Bryson. I didn’t mean—”
“You will tell me immediately—and I mean immediately—if you become aware of any rumors regarding connections I may or may not have. Is that perfectly clear, Dr. Atwood?”
Atwood blinked rapidly. After a moment, Witner leaned back in his chair, his expression softening.
“I only mean to say that reputation is very important in my situation, Humphrey.”
“Yes, certainly, sir. And I only wanted to say that I’m proud to be standing in your shadow.”
Just so long as you stay there.
XII
Behind The Veil
The western sky held only a pale scarlet glow when Bryson Witner rose from his desk and went to the window. He had worked out a plan for dealing with Gavin, and there must be no further delay. He leaned on the broad sill and regarded the black shape of the Seneca River, curving by the undergraduate campus in the twilight like a sickle blade before it straightened and ran through the center of New Canterbury.
He lingered for a moment, gathering his thoughts, then dialed Fred Hinkle’s home number. He listened impatiently as Hinkle’s wife said Fred wasn’t home. Hinkle shouted something in the background and, a moment later, came on the line.
“Domestic bliss, Fred?”
“What do you want, Witner?”
“Fred, I have another electrical problem at my house. I need you to come check things out this evening.” Witner heard him breathing. “It’s that same old circuit breaker panel again,” he added when Hinkle didn’t respond.
“Does it have to be tonight? I promised Martine a movie.”
“I’m very concerned about fire.”
“How about the morning?”
“There’s a real danger of fire, Fred.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I’ll see you at seven-thirty. Come around the back way.”
Witner got his overcoat from the closet, donned a blue baseball cap with NCMC embroidered on the front, then made his way down the dim hallway. He felt a little foolish wearing a baseball cap—with a logo, no less—but it enhanced the regular-guy image he cultivated in the minds of younger faculty members. He’d never worn one at Harvard, but maybe he should have. Things might have turned out differently.
He let his white Volvo warm up then eased down the ramp of the parking garage. A freezing drizzle had fallen late that afternoon, and when he turned out from under the overhang at the bottom of the ramp, the station wagon slid and the right front fender scraped concrete with a sickening crunch. He released a long breath through his teeth.
The garage attendant, Lloyd, a man who suffered from chronic open sores on his forehead, sprinted from his booth.
“You all right, Dr. Witner?”
Witner rolled down the window.
“I was doing less than five miles an hour—of course, I’m alright. I’m more concerned about my headlight. Take a look up there—and throw down some salt.”
“Doc, the glass looks okay,” Lloyd said when he returned, “but the molding frame is bent, and the headlight wiper is dangling.”
“Blast it!”
“A car with wipers for the headlamps. Boy, that’s something.”
“Yes, exciting, isn’t it?” Witner snapped, jerking the shift lever into drive. “Now, move away, or I might fishtail into you.”
He hated damage to his vehicle, but repairs would have to wait. Ordinarily, he would have gone straight to the Volvo dealer, which stayed open till nine. However, the meeting with Hinkle took precedence over everything, even this evening’s business meeting of the Pet Partners Club; he had already called to inform them he couldn’t make it.
His membership in Pet Partners was a matter of no small political expediency. At the first dinner party at the Delancys’, right after Randy became the Blue Team chief resident, Witner discovered Mrs. Delancy presided over a pet therapy group. The organization was dedicated to the proposition that demented senior citizens living in nursing homes benefited from mingling with domesticated animals. When he’d mentioned his ferrets, Hex and Rex, Belinda had recruited him.
“Oh, Dr. Witner, that would be wonderful! Cats and dogs we’ve got aplenty. We need more exotics, like my Nguyen. Hex and Rex, how charming.”
Nguyen was Belinda’s potbellied pig.
So, for the past eight Sunday mornings, Witner had driven over to the Delancy house, where Abe Delancy, the board chairman, dressed for golf, would give him a warm handshake.
“By God, Bryson, it’s an honorable thing, this pet business, but better you than me. I wouldn’t have guessed you for a ferret man.”
Off Witner would drive with Belinda in the passenger seat, his ferrets in a cage, and the pig reclining on a plastic tarp in the cargo area.
“You know, Bryson, the first time you brought Rex and Hex, I had my doubts—the way the brown one scuttled up that poor old woman’s arm. But she loved it.”
How surprised Belinda would have been if she knew the real reason he kept Hex and Rex—their presence kept his house free of Infection.
The flow of traffic stopped just before the Seneca River Bridge. He checked his watch and ticked his fingernails on the steering wheel. It would not do to miss Hinkle. He probably should have left the hospital earlier. Even though home was only forty minutes away, at times like this he wished he lived closer to the university. That, however, would have meant a loss of privacy. His house on
the lake was surrounded by woods, and the nearest neighbor lived a quarter-mile away.
That degree of isolation was good for now, but when the deanship was his, he must get a second place in town. There would be entertaining to do.
The traffic crawled forward, and he saw flashing red lights up near the bridge. A car was on the side of the road, its front end buckled. Three police cars, magnesium flares, a fire truck and an ambulances—idiots. As usual, the paramedics were strutting around.
He detested emergency medics. Many of them were obese physician-wannabes in love with uniforms. They loitered in the ER, scattering cigarette butts over the ambulance ramp and flirting with the nurses. Their champion, of course, was Jack Forester, who trained them and encouraged them.
But that would soon end. Atwood’s idiotic study would certainly drive Forester out.
He was almost at the accident site now, and realized he couldn’t just drive by like the average citizen. He might be recognized.
He rolled down the window.
“Hello, there, sir!” he yelled to one of the medics. “This is Dr. Witner. Can I be of help?”
“No, sir, everything’s under control. But thanks for asking.”
“You’re sure? I’m Dr. Witner, from the medical center. I’d be glad to help.”
“Thanks much, Dr. Witner, but it’s under control.”
Witner smiled and waved.
* * *
Often, when Witner worked in his basement during the cold months, he would don his academic robe from Harvard. It was warmer than a sweater, and put him in a reflective mood. He was wearing it when Hinkle came to his cellar door at the rear of the house, which was at ground level due to the slope of the land toward the lake.
“Sorry I’m late,” Hinkle said, stepping out of the cold and shutting the door. “Martine was really pissed. You owe me.”
Witner marveled how men of a brutish nature like Hinkle let themselves be dominated by a woman. Sex was the cause, the need to slake their lust.
“Well, Fred, I feel sure you’ll discover a way to make it up to her.”
Hinkle peered around, eyes wide below his thick Neanderthal brow, a bit of supper stuck to the corner of his mouth.
“Why are you wearing that get-up?” he demanded.
Witner smiled and took a few slow, challenging steps toward him. Although Hinkle was burly, with the shoulders of an ox, Witner towered over him by more than a foot and was wide in the shoulders himself.
“Does it bother you, Fred?” he said, folding his arms and staring down.
Hinkle glowered for a moment then dropped his eyes.
“I don’t give a damn what you wear, Witner.”
“Good. Now, come with me.”
He led the way down a path between old furniture, metal filing cabinets and stacked boxes to his sanctum sanctorum, the workshop where he worked on his marionettes. Crafting puppets out of wood and fiberglass and animating them electronically was a hobby he’d picked up as an undergraduate. Seven life-sized figures sat in a semicircle of chairs, each in accurate period clothing.
Hinkle gave a cynical laugh.
“I still can’t get over these things,” he said, shaking his head. “So, these are supposed to be old doctors?”
“That’s correct, Fred,” Witner replied after a moment. “Hippocrates, Galen, Paracelsus, Harvey, Rush, Cushing and, last but not least, Sir William Osler.”
“Oh, yeah, let’s not forget Osler.” Hinkle chuckled, giving him a challenging, stupid look. “You just make them and leave them sitting around down here to mildew?”
“No, Fred. Sometimes they come upstairs.”
“And that’s all you’re going to do with them? It’s nuts. Why bother?”
Witner approached him.
“What’s you’re favorite hobby, Fred? Rolling cigarettes? Or maybe it’s knocking your new wife around?”
Hinkle glared back, his eyes narrowing.
Witner stepped closer, smiled down on him.
“You think you’re stronger than I am, don’t you, Fred?”
“Don’t press your luck, Witner.”
“You’re thinking right now that you could kill me if you wanted. I can see it in your eyes. You like the thought. It energizes you. All those things you told me about being an Army brat over in Germany when you were a boy, having to fight those skinheads just to get to school, and then becoming a SEAL, and about your time in the Persian Gulf, killing prisoners. Death is in your blood.”
“You’re off your freaking rocker.”
“If anything were to happen to me, Fred, I’ve arranged for the right people to know about what you did to your first wife, and to Dr. Robert McCarthy and Dr. Zyman. Now, shall we proceed?”
“You’re in this just as deep.”
“I think not. You must have misinterpreted some idle comment I made, and given the well-documented degree to which you hated and abused your late wife, I doubt you’d get much sympathy from a jury. Nor is there any possible way I can be tied to Dr. McCarthy’s terrible accident.”
“You were the one who suggested I kill Madeline in the first goddamn place!”
“What possible motive would I have to do something like that? When you shared with me that she was addicted to prescription narcotics and alcohol, and was making your life a living hell, and the way she was forcing you to raise your stepdaughter singlehandedly, I sympathized with you, Fred, of course. But Madeline was a patient of mine—it was only natural I should try to comfort her husband. When you queried me about the lethal doses of certain medications, I had no idea you wanted to put her out of her misery and collect her life insurance.
“But sitting in a safe in my lawyer’s office, Fred, is all the evidence the police would ever need to hang you, just waiting for something to happen to me. Now, sit.”
“Fuck you, Witner,” Hinkle snarled. “Screw you to hell.” Still, he pulled out a chair and sat.
Witner went to his workbench. He opened a drawer and drew out three white candles. Placing them in a triangular pattern on a table next to Hinkle, he lit them with a kitchen match.
“I don’t understand you at all, Witner.”
“Of course, you don’t. That’s the way it must be.”
He switched off the fluorescent light above his workbench so the only illumination came from the candles and a row of tiny bulbs on the ceiling above the mannequins. He sat across from Hinkle and watched the candlelight ripple over the man’s face as his jaws clenched and unclenched.
“So, Fred, let’s stay on the same team, shall we? You’ll get what you want, and my needs will be met as well.”
“When will this be over?”
“When I am the permanent dean and all challenges to that situation are eliminated,” Witner said. “It shouldn’t be long, assuming I can call upon your assistance again tonight.”
“What’s the deal?”
“I now believe that, just before he died, Dr. Zyman contacted a certain party who, therefore, must be removed.”
“Is this the last one?”
“I don’t know. There may be more.”
“Will there be bonuses?”
“My silence should be bonus enough.”
Hinkle leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. Witner held up his hand and smiled.
“Of course, there will be bonuses, Fred. You won’t be disappointed. When my goal is reached, there’ll be double the total.”
“And then I’m selling the marina and clearing out of here. That’s it. No more.”
“That’s your business. Unless, of course, you come to wish your new wife were also sleeping six feet under.”
“You’re an asshole, Witner. I love her. We’ve only been married two years.”
“You should have taken my advice and not married a woman half your age who doesn’t like your stepdaughter. How is she doing, by the way? She’s, what, twelve years old now?”
“Katrina’s thirteen, and you’re right. They hate each other.”
&n
bsp; “You should have listened.”
“Martine sits at the supper table and blows smoke at her. Katrina’s sick half the time.”
“This is what I like, Fred. You and I sitting here chewing the fat like a couple of old friends. That’s the way it should be.”
“Give me a break.”
“Would you care for some sherry?”
“Fuck you and your sherry. I promised Martine I’d be back in an hour.”
“So you will.”
“Who’s the party?”
“Dr. James Gavin.”
“Christ.”
“Not hardly.”
XIII
He Ain’t Heavy
Jack took his coffee out onto his deck; Arbus followed and sat at his feet. He gazed out at the sloping field below his house. There were still patches of snow, but they were rapidly melting. The dog looked up at him, panting steam, an expectant look on his face. He reached down and scratched his head.
“No time for a walk today, buddy.”
Tossing the dregs of his coffee over the rail, he went back through the sliding glass doors into his living room with its open-beamed ceiling. After collecting his briefcase, he slipped on a trench coat and a pair of duck boots and headed outside through the side door carrying his good shoes in a shopping bag. Arbus bounded down from the deck and caught up with him as he crossed the yard.
“Don’t give me that look, Arbus. Tonight we’ll hike to the bluff. Then I’ll build us a fire in the woodstove, and we can commiserate.”
The dog’s mouth dropped open into a smile, and Jack had to laugh.
“Wait a minute, boy. We’d better check on Tony.”
He set the briefcase in the garage then trudged to the old gambrel-roofed barn sitting fifty yards uphill behind the house. The barn had been the only building of his great-grandfather’s farm still standing when he’d inherited the land and built his home on the fieldstone foundation of the original farmhouse, which had burned to the ground a generation ago.
Sliding open the doors, he saw a small green tent pitched near the tractor. Arbus shot past and disappeared inside it.
Jack’s younger brother Tony, his only sibling, had lived with him for the past three years. The arrangement was an odd one. From early spring until the streams froze over, Tony camped outside. Though Jack kept an aluminum chest by the side door stocked with canned food, vitamins and batteries for his MP3 player, Tony lived otherwise off the land. Sometimes, he set up his tent on the ridge behind the house, sometimes down below near the bluff.
Final Mercy Page 9